This volume brings together research on how gameplay data in serious games may be turned into valuable analytics or actionable intelligence for performance measurement, assessment, and improvement. Chapter authors use empirical research methodologies, including existing, experimental, and emerging conceptual frameworks, from various fields, such as: computer science software engineering educational data mining statistics information visualization. Serious games is an emerging field where the games are created using sound learning theories and instructional design principles to maximize learning and training success. But how would stakeholders know what play-learners have done in the game environment, and if the actions performance brings about learning? Could they be playing the game for fun, really learning with evidence of performance improvement, or simply gaming the system, i.e., finding loopholes to fake that they are making progress? This volume endeavors to answer these questions.

Modeling the interaction between persons and items for binary response data, item response theory (IRT) has been found useful in a wide variety of applications. Over the past decades, studies have been conducted on the development and application of unidimensional as well as multidimensional IRT models. However, little literature exists on IRT-based models that incorporate one general trait and several specific trait dimensions. This book, therefore, proposes such models in the Bayesian hierarchical framework, assesses their performances in various testing situations and further compares them with the conventional IRT models using Bayesian model choice techniques. Results from the analysis suggest that the proposed models offer a better way to represent the test situations not realized in existing models. The methodology and analysis should shed some light on the development of complex IRT models and the statistical procedures for parameter estimation, and should be especially useful to professionals in educational and psychological measurement, or anyone who may be considering utilizing IRT models for assessing persons' continuous latent traits.