A Systematic Literature Review of Digital Game-based Assessment Empirical Studies: Current Trends and Open Challenges

Technology has become an essential part of our everyday life, and its use in educational environments keeps growing. In addition, games are one of the most popular activities across cultures and ages, and there is ample evidence that supports the benefits of using games for assessment. This field is commonly known as game-based assessment (GBA), which refers to the use of games to assess learners' competencies, skills, or knowledge. This paper analyzes the current status of the GBA field by performing the first systematic literature review on empirical GBA studies, based on 66 research papers that used digital GBAs to determine: (1) the context where the study has been applied, (2) the primary purpose, (3) the knowledge domain of the game used, (4) game/tool availability, (5) the size of the data sample, (6) the data science techniques and algorithms applied, (7) the targeted stakeholders of the study, and (8) what limitations and challenges are reported by authors. Based on the categories established and our analysis, the findings suggest that GBAs are mainly used in formal education and for assessment purposes, and most GBAs focus on assessing STEM content and cognitive skills. Furthermore, the current limitations indicate that future GBA research would benefit from the use of bigger data samples and more specialized algorithms. Based on our results, we discuss the status of the field with the current trends and the open challenges (including replication and validation problems) providing recommendations for the future research agenda of the GBA field.