Stealth Assessment ― Measuring and Supporting Learning in Video Games

To succeed in today's interconnected and complex world, workers need to be able tothink systemically, creatively, and critically. Equipping K-16 students with thesetwenty-first-century competencies requires new thinking not only about what should be taught inschool but also about how to develop valid assessments to measure and support these competencies. InStealth Assessment, Valerie Shute and Matthew Ventura investigate an approachthat embeds performance-based assessments in digital games. They argue that using well-designedgames as vehicles to assess and support learning will help combat students' growing disengagementfrom school, provide dynamic and ongoing measures of learning processes and outcomes, and offerstudents opportunities to apply such complex competencies as creativity, problem solving,persistence, and collaboration. Embedding assessments within games provides a way to monitorplayers' progress toward targeted competencies and to use that information to supportlearning.

Shute and Ventura discuss problems with such traditional assessmentmethods as multiple-choice questions, review evidence relating to digital games and learning, andillustrate the stealth-assessment approach with a set of assessments they are developing andembedding in the digital game Newton's Playground. These stealth assessments areintended to measure levels of creativity, persistence, and conceptual understanding of Newtonianphysics during game play. Finally, they consider future research directions related to stealthassessment in education.

Matthew Ventura is a Research Scientist at Florida State University.