Episode 68 What is a Knowledge Check?

What is a Knowledge Check?

Hi and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more at www.universityxp.com

On today’s episode we’ll answer the question: “What is a Knowledge Check?”

Making sure that learners are learning what they need to learn is important. That’s especially important when teaching something critical, applicable, or related to something that is time sensitive. That’s when knowledge checks come into play. Knowledge checks are a way for us to determine whether our learners are learning what we want them to learn when we want them to learn it.

However, we don’t often think about games as structures for knowledge checks. Why would we? Games are meant to be played. Games are experiences. We play games for fun. But, when using games for teaching, games-based learning, simulations, or serious games we need to include times to check in with our learners and determine if they are learning we expect them to.

This episode will review what knowledge checks are for teaching, training, and games-based learning. Why we should use knowledge checks as both educators and game designers will be reviewed as well as how assessing the learning of our students can be done within the context of the game.

Types of knowledge will be covered as well as how we can structure and design these knowledge checks to determine if our students and players are on the right path. Feedback is important for knowledge checks as well as creating a bank of opportunities to check in with our students as the need arises.

Knowledge checks are opportunities that instructors, teachers, trainers, and facilitators use to check and determine if students, learners, and users can understand and apply the content that is presented to them.

Most students and instructors often think about tests and quizzes as forms of knowledge checks. These are ways for you to asses learning of your students, but they aren’t the only way. Yes, there are examples of knowledge checks that use tests and quizzes. But, there are also many other ways for assessing your students learning and competencies.

At the end of the day it is up to the educator to create and determine learning objectives to shape and structure the student experience. Likewise, the game designer creates the formal structures of games to shape and influence the player experience. Learning - like games - is a structured experience that is influenced by both learner also known as the player and the designer as the instructor.

Knowledge checks provide students and learners an opportunity to demonstrate how they’ve grasped; applied; or otherwise made sense from educational material. That material could have been a lecture, a video, a podcast, an experiment, or a discussion. This is especially important for corporate trainers, teachers, instructors, and facilitators as including knowledge checks are the main way to determine if their students have achieved specific learning outcomes.

The inclusion of knowledge checks also helps students and learners focus their attention on specific nuances and aspects of the material. This helps them focus their attention on these areas as well as how content applies in both relation and practice.

Most educators, instructors, teachers, and faculty will know what knowledge checks are in both theory and practice. Game designers may not be familiar with the term. But they are familiar with the structure and format for how they are created. That’s because game designers already know and experience feedback loops in games as a main way that the player interacts with a game. Likewise, a knowledge check in games-based learning uses the game itself as a structure for creating opportunities to determine student mastery over the game and their own learning.

Where knowledge checks for educators and game designers often differ is how the information and content is assessed through a knowledge check. Often, educators focus on declarative and factual knowledge in a knowledge check. In this format, tests and quizzes make the most sense to use because the assessment is trying to determine only if a student can remember or recall information.

However, games are an experiential form of learning. Therefore, games can be used not only to determine if a player remembers something, but also what they can do with that new information. As such, knowledge checks become a multipurpose tool: both for determining mastery and assessment of knowledge as well as a method for application and experimentation with knowledge.

Knowledge checks are usually used for teaching and learning as a form of assessment of students’ knowledge. This is where most people draw the connection between tests, quizzes, and knowledge checks. This is because assessment in education is a systematic process of documenting students’ progression in an effort to refine and improve student learning.

In short, assessments are used in order to help both students and instructors achieve specific learning outcomes. There can also be deep assessments as well as simple ones. Simple assessments can determine if a student has completed all of their required material. Games provide this in either an included tutorial or by showing players what a completed game setup looks like.

Assessments can further be broken down by when they are given to learners in the process of learning. Formative assessments and summative assessments are the two main ways that instructors assess student learning.

Formative assessments refer to an in-process evaluation of student comprehension, progression and learning needs. These come in the form of mid-term tests and weekly quizzes in education. In games, these come in the form of applied tactics and memory recall of different game components. The combination of these two creates player dynamics within the game.

Summative assessments are the second type of assessments used by educators. Unlike formative assessments, summative assessments focus on learning at the end of a process. In education, we see these most frequently in final tests, exams, or projects. In games we can consider “consequential” moments in game play such as “boss battles” and major interactions between players. This can take place in applied tactics that give players some sort of short term gain or with long term strategies that help players win over the course of a longer game.

We cannot consider knowledge checks without also considering the types of knowledge that students and players create through games-based learning. Those types of knowledge affect and influence the way that players use, apply, and make meaning from their game play.

The four majors types of knowledge considered in these knowledge checks include factual knowledge; conceptual knowledge; procedural knowledge; and metacognitive knowledge.

Factual knowledge is often the easiest kind of knowledge to check against. This type of knowledge is about the recall of terms, definitions, and basic details.  Vocabulary quizzes, anatomy charts, and term definitions are all types of assessments addressing factual knowledge. Games require factual knowledge. We can see this in board games during the “teach “when the host explains how to play a particular game. Here, players need to be able to correctly identify games components before they know how and when to use them.

Conceptual knowledge builds on factual knowledge by creating and forming relationships between each discrete piece of information. Conceptual knowledge is better known as identifying the relationships and functions among the details and elements within a larger structure.

Examples of this in education are defining and demonstrating how different organs in the digestive system connect to each other; how a balance sheet works in accounting; and how an airplane wing generates lift.  Conceptual knowledge is demonstrated in games when we define how different game components and game mechanics connect with one another to affect the game state.

In Super Mario Bros we learn early on how to jump. Jumping as a mechanic combined with a component – a Fire Flower - represents a change in the game state. Mario earns that Power Up and is now able to throw fireballs. We now know what fire flowers and jumping are. Through the combination of the two we have demonstrated conceptual knowledge.

Procedural knowledge is something that tested often in both games and formal learning. Procedural knowledge in learning is the demonstration of a process that provides the learner with a tangible and measurable outcome. Examples of this in education include the different formats and structures of term papers and how developing an outline and creating a thesis represent different sections of a paper we use to write an essay.

Likewise, games are filled with examples of procedural learning. Knowing how to trade for resources in Catan and then exchanging them for roads and structures demonstrates that we know how to create these things in the game. The demonstration puts us on the road towards ending the game and victory.

Finally, metacognitive knowledge is one of the hardest and most often forgotten types of knowledge. Metacognitive knowledge is a type of learning that is reflective of one’s self and the learning process. An example of this is the use of a reflective journal and peer review of a process. This type of knowledge is often difficult to assess, value, and interpret because it is very subjective. However, understanding the very different process of how each individual person learns is challenging but simultaneously also very valuable.

Very few games include metacognitive knowledge checks. The games that do include these types of knowledge checks do so as an interpretation of the entire game.  Both Train and Papers Please are games that mechanically, at face value, are very basic. However, the discussions that players have about the game and their experience are the metacognitive experience and how players create meaning from their interaction with the game.

Knowledge checks take on the form of different applications in both traditional learning as well as games-based learning.  No matter how you choose to use them in your own practice, a focus should always be placed on providing both you, and your learners, with insight and information on their learning and comprehension.

Trivia games provided by applications of Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, and Kahoot have been staples of games-based knowledge checks for some time. Dependent on your content and learning outcomes, these applications can be great use for checking the factual knowledge for your learners.  However, the way that learners are evaluated depends highly on the kind of knowledge check implemented and the type of knowledge assessed.

Combination knowledge checks can also assess learners’ outcomes in several different knowledge types. You can ask a team of sales people during a corporate training session to first identify some of the most common customer complaints received about a product: factual knowledge. After identifying these complaints you can challenge the sales team to outline the steps - procedural knowledge - necessary for resolving these complaints.

Knowledge checks represent types of assessments that learners and players encounter as they play your game. As such, knowledge checks are often scattered throughout training courses and classes as they check learners’ understanding of the content along the way.

However, they shouldn’t be indiscriminately scattered throughout your design. Instead, think about times when learners and players need extra enforcement of what knowledge you are testing them for and when it makes sense to acknowledge that enforcement.

Likewise, you can also structure knowledge checks to go to different areas or “branch” based on the response chosen.  This provides you with the ability to give the player agency and structure as they progress throughout your game and course.

Knowledge checks can also be paired with other components such as scoreboards and unlocked content that allows the learner access to new features and areas that they previously couldn’t access before. Doing so emphasizes students’ intrinsic motivation to continue to learn and play by utilizing tools which help them learn more easily.

Lastly, don’t forget to consider how the concept of socialized learning helps students connect, empathize, and relate how they’ve experienced content as part of your game or course as it relates to their overall learning. Doing so creates opportunities to emphasize intrinsic motivation to help students continue learning and engaging on their own.

Designing your knowledge checks can be as difficult as determining where they appear in your course and game. Extremely difficult knowledge or timed checks in the form of hard questions or tough challenges can scare away students and players. Instead, consider structuring and scaffolding knowledge checks as a way for your players to develop competencies early on so that they can tackle harder challenges later.

Knowledge check design and structure also go hand-in-hand with the overall story of the course. The story of the course also influences how players fit in with the overall narrative of the game or learning outcomes of the class. This is another prime opportunity where branched scenarios provides learners control of where they go next in the game given their responses to the knowledge check.

In the end, knowledge checks help reinforce the feedback loop for learners and players. Knowledge checks should ideally be designed with some sort of actionable feedback for players. This can come in the form of additional contextual insight on the question; feedback provided for wrong answers; or opportunities to earn points through scoring.

The time between the check and the feedback is imperative. Immediate feedback provides the learner with insight on what has not worked so that they can determine how to correct their path for the future. This is further refined when designers can create options for learners to revisit previous knowledge checks or additional and helpful information that will allow them to master the content.

Providing past content and helpful information allows the learner to create an opportunity to connect what occurred and what resolved successfully and how they can take actionable steps on that information for the future.

While the standard image that we might have for knowledge checks includes tests, quizzes, and questions, they don’t always have to be. Remember: knowledge checks are about providing your players and your learners with opportunities to examine the knowledge that they’ve gained and created while applying what they’ve learned.

Through this, you can consider using standard “banks” of questions that students are asked throughout the course. This provides a ready resource of questions that you can ask students. However, also consider when and how you ask students these questions. You always want to ask students these questions after they have reviewed material or content that has to do with the question. So, scheduling these questions to come during certain times is critical.

Likewise, games can include these banks of scaffolded knowledge checks by continually challenging players with opportunities to put past learned knowledge into practice. This could be as basic as continually using the game’s navigation to traverse throughout the world or always providing a way for players to exchange resources of one thing for game components of another.

However, question banks and the creation of these knowledge checks for students don’t always have to be structured so thoroughly. Scattering these assessments throughout your class and your game environment creates a sense of serendipity for your players as they engage. Structured times but random checks provide an opportunity for your players to engage while also creating unique experiences for each student.

This episode reviewed knowledge checks and how they are used in education as well as through games-based learning. An argument for why knowledge checks should be used was offered in addition to how knowledge checks are an applied form of student assessment. Types of knowledge were reviewed with examples of how they influence the types of knowledge checks implemented.  How to structure and design knowledge checks was offered as well as how to engage your learners in active feedback loops.

I hope you found this episode useful. If you’d like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining me!

Again, I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.

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