The Diagnostic

A year in the life of an esports teacher (Part 2)

With induction out of the way it’s time for stage two – The Diagnostic! While the students were discussing the pros and cons and moral dilemmas posed by ‘Squid Game’, I was planning my own sort of ‘test’ in the form of a start-of-term diagnostic… admittedly with far fewer victims, or at least that was my hope!

As all educators will know, when the new academic year begins the diagnostic test is vital in any subject for understanding and getting a feel for your students, where they sit on the scale, and how likely they are to succeed. In saying that, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to adequately assessing the quality of students – but it does help!

With no GCSE in esports (yet) I found myself quite excited about the options available to me in terms of the diagnostic as there are no existing blueprints for the new BTEC. I decided on a two-pronged approach — I will discuss stage two in the next article, but for now I just want to talk about the diagnostic test. It needed to be relatively simple and easy to understand as none of the students would have experienced any form of esports teaching previously. But at the same time, it did need to test them, so how do you make it a workable and worthwhile opener to the course?

This is the second in a series of blog posts by lecturer, consultant, and teacher of esports, Nik Turner. To read the rest of this article visit the creators of the BTEC – Pearson