In a recent
article by Lee Banville, editor of Gamesandlearning.org,
Dr.Kristen DiCerbo, director of eLearning at the Pearson Research & Innovation
Network, states that “Games have the potential to be assessment without the
test.”
DiCerbo's
research program centers on digital technologies in learning and assessment,
particularly on the use of data generated from interactions to inform
instructional decisions. A senior research scientist, she has conducted
qualitative and quantitative investigations of games and simulations,
particularly focusing on the identification and accumulation of evidence.
DiCerbo admits
that stealth assessments woven 'invisibly' into digital gaming environments is
“a radical idea”, but it is one she believes in and with her background in the
data and assessment tools available she thinks she has that potential to make
it happen. She also believes we are at a key inflection point and we will
arrive at a place technologically where we can gather data to build assessments
without administering tests as we know them.
In games,
educators can observe a student's sequence of actions, time spent on tasks,
multiple attempts at activities, requests for help, communication process, etc.
In other words, games allow us to examine a student's process of problem
solving, not just the final product at the end. These observations can help
educators make valuable inferences regarding students' mastery over skills,
while offering new ways to assess factors not easily measured on multiple-choice
tests, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, persistence,
and creativity.
“It is important
to note that the term invisible does not imply that learners or teachers do not
know that assessment is happening. Rather, it implies that the actual activity
of assessment is not visible, or interrupting the classroom,” DiCerbo says.
Dr. DiCerbo
states that a number of quality games exist today that successfully balance
these factors and have tremendous potential as tools for both learning and
assessment. However, much work is still needed to maximize their value,
particularly in the area of integration.
Assessment
can be largely facilitated depending on how well the game elements (engagement)
and instructional elements (potential to teach/inform) are integrated within
the game. When seamlessly integrated, this connection becomes transparent to
the player.
She
believes that the assessment potential of games will continue to grow as game developers
work ever more closely with education experts.
The “Invisible” Stealth Assessment
Gaining Ground
Dr Val
Shute, the Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner endowed professor of education at
Florida State University, and former principal research scientist at ETS,
coined the term "stealth assessment" to describe this approach.
She will
give a keynote presentation at ACER's Research Conference 2015 in
August on how games designed with stealth assessment capabilities can measure
and assess 21st Century competencies. The theme of this year's Research
Conference, to be held August 16-18, is Learning Assessments: Designing the Future.
Dr Shute
notes that the traditional approach in schools usually divorces assessment from
learning. “The typical educational cycle is: teach; stop; administer test;
teach, with new content,” Dr Shute said, speaking ahead of the conference.
Dr. Shute
promotes the idea of "stealth assessments" that are unobtrusively
woven into the fabric of video games in order to measure in real time how
players are progressing toward a variety of targets—not just for content
learning, but also for checking progress on so-called 21st century skills.
"There's
no better system than games to provide challenging problems without completely
overwhelming people," she says. "Stealth assessment considers the
process of failing and trying again as a source of evidence for
persistence."
Here's how
the process is intended to work: First, a game will track in real time how long
a player spends on a difficult problem or how often a player is willing to
retry a problem at which he or she had previously failed. Based on that
information, the game can then offer encouragement or adjust the types of
problems presented to that player, seeking to find the sweet spot that will be
challenging enough to promote learning but not so difficult as to discourage
continued effort.
The first
round of such games have already been developed, including Newton's Playground,
further renamed to Physics Playground, a digital game created by Dr
Shute with support from the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Newton’s
Playground is a computer-based, two-dimensional game
that requires the player to guide a green ball to a red balloon. The player can
nudge the ball to the left and right (if the surface is flat) but the primary
way to move the ball is by drawing/creating simple machines (which are called
“agents of force and motion” in the game) on the screen that “come to life”
once the object is drawn. Everything obeys the basic rules of physics relating
to gravity and Newton’s three laws of motion. The stealth assessments that are directly built into the game capture
and analyze the log data produced by the player’s interactions with the game.
"Stealth
assessment is intended to be invisible and ongoing, to support learning, and
remove or seriously reduce test anxiety while not sacrificing validity and
consistency," Dr Shute said.
"With
stealth assessment, schools no longer have to interrupt the teaching and
learning process to administer tests. Instead, assessment is continual and
invisible to students, supporting real-time, just-in-time instruction."