Closing Keynote Speaker
Constance Steinkuehler
Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President, University of Wisconsin
Constance Steinkuehler is an Associate Professor in Digital Media at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Co-Director of the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) center at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, and Chair of their annual GLS Conference. In 2011-2012, she served as Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) where she advised on national initiatives related to games. Policy work there included the coordination of cross-agency efforts to leverage games toward national priority areas (e.g. childhood obesity, early literacy, STEM education) and the creation of new partnerships to support an ecosystem for more diversified innovation in commercial and non-commercial games. She currently serves as President of the Learning Games Network (LGN), a non-for-profit organization that partners and amplifies R&D at universities across the nation working on games for impact.
Constance’s research is on cognition and learning in commercial entertainment games and games designed for impact. Current interests include neuroscience and games (particularly in the areas of attention and emotional and social well-being), learning analytics (informal scientific reasoning, problem-solving, so called “non-cognitive” skills such as interest and persistence), and the development of mixed methodologies for online discourse analysis. Her work has been funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. She has published over twenty peer reviews publications on games and learning, three edited books three special issues of peer reviewed academic journals focused on the intellectual life of games, and the 2009 National Academies of Science report entitled Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education. Game titles include Tenacity and Crystals of Kaydor.
Constance has a PhD in Literacy Studies, an MS in Educational Psychology, and three Bachelor Degrees in Mathematics, English, and Religious Studies. Her dissertation was a cognitive ethnography of the MMOs Lineage I and II where she served as siege princess for the LegendsOfAden guild.
Games for Learning Assessment
Over the last decade, games have been taken up as an important medium for behavioral and cognitive change. As immersive, interactive technologies, games enable new forms of engagement, personalization, and assessment. From balancing algebra equations to invading cells with viral DNA, from negotiating with competing stakeholders over local land use to conducting bench lab stem cell generation in order to save the planet from a zombie apocalypse, games for learning have become the go-to medium for giving students first hand yet designed experiences in areas that are otherwise obscure, dangerous, impossible, or simply bland. Data exhaust from such learning technologies allows constant product iteration and improvement, tailored personalization for the user, and a rich data set for inferences about not only target domain understanding, skills, and dispositions but also second order variables such as persistence, self-regulation of attention, and play preference. In this keynote, Steinkuehler reviews the current landscape of games for learning and assessment, highlighting recent innovations in assessment design and delivery.
What are the current opportunities in the game-based assessment space? What are the barriers and frictions? And how will such new technologies fit within (or disrupt) our current educational assessment ecosystem? Come hear Constance discuss serious gaming and how it plays into the future of testing.
GOLF 
