Developing and Validating Stealth Assessments for an Educational Game to Assess Young Dual Language Immersion Learners' Reading Comprehension

• Main Author: Poole, Frederick J
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2020
• Subjects: Behavior Patterns; Bilingual education; Control Groups; Data Analysis; Educational Environment; Educational Games; Educational Objectives; Educational technology; Foreign language education; Foreign language instruction; Foreign language learning; Instructional Materials; Language Skills; Literature Reviews; Reading Comprehension; Reading instruction; Reading Skills; Romanization; Teaching Methods; Vocabulary Development
• ISBN: 9798557023016

The purpose of this multiple-paper dissertation is to design a digital game and stealth assessments within the game to assess young second language learners’ Chinese reading proficiency. In Chapter 2 (Paper 1), I describe the game designed for this dissertation and how it was implemented in a dual language immersion classroom. This study found that the digital game and in-class implementation led to significant vocabulary and reading comprehension gains. Further, seven types of support that students needed while playing the game were identified. In Chapter 3 (Paper 2), I describe how educational data mining approaches, and more specifically, how data-driven explorations, can provide insight into how players interact with the game and further how those interactions relate to proficiency and learning. In this study, I identify time on task and use of an in-game glossing tool as important indicators for learning. In addition, four subgroups of students were identified based on their gameplay styles. Finally, in Chapter 4 (Paper 3), I describe how stealth assessments were designed and validated within the game. This study found that the stealth assessments were significantly correlated with two external measures of reading comprehension.