FORMULATIONS & FINDINGS Formative Evaluation of Students at Quest to Learn IJLM Valarie Shute Abstract Florida State University
[email protected] Quest to Learn (Q2L) is a public school that opened in 2009 to respond to the needs of kids Matthew Ventura Florida State University who are growing up in a highly networked, glob-
[email protected] ally competitive, and complex world. The school was designed to include a game-based pedagogy that provides a dynamic, interdisciplinary cur- Robert Torres The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation riculum, as well as immersive, challenge-based
[email protected] learning experiences. The present article reports the findings from a 20-month evaluation of Q2L. This research was launched when the school opened, with the main goal to identify and assess Keywords a set of key student competencies that are rele- assessment vant and important to Q2L. This student-level evidence-centered design evaluation focused on students’ development of game-based pedagogy three core skills—systems thinking, time man- agement, and teamwork—over the 20-month time period. We found that students significantly improved their systems thinking skills over the duration of the study, and improved (albeit, not significantly) on their time management and teamwork skills as well. Visit IJLM.net doi:10.1162/IJLM_a_00087 c 2013 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license Volume 4, Number 1 Shute / Formative Evaluation of Students at Quest to Learn 55 FORMULATIONS & FINDINGS Formative Evaluation of Student Learning responsibility and respect for others and self. For at Quest to Learn more, see http://q2l.org/.