We know that games are engaging; but they can also be powerful vehicles to support learning. This, however, hinges on getting the game design as well as the assessment parts just right. A decade of research and design work reveals intentional assessment in games can effectively measure and support important 21st century competencies. Featured presenter Valerie Shute will share examples of stealth assessment from an actual game, Physics Playground, designed to measure students’ developing competencies in the areas of qualitative physics understanding, creativity, and persistence.
Framing Questions:
- What is stealth assessment in electronic games?
- Why is stealth assessment important in the current world our children live and learn in?
- What are some results from controlled experiments using stealth assessment to measure and support learning?
Presentation Video
ALN Presentation: Stealth Assessment to Measure and Support Learning
Presenter: Valerie Shute
Valerie Shute is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. For more than four decades, she’s been involved with basic and applied research related to measurement, assessment, cognitive diagnosis, individual differences, and learning from advanced instructional systems. Her general research foci hover around the design, development, and evaluation of systems to enhance learning—particularly related to 21st century competencies. Over the past decade, her work has mainly focused on creating and using games with stealth assessment to support learning—of cognitive and noncognitive knowledge, skills, and dispositions (e.g., physics, problem solving, creativity, persistence). Her research has resulted in numerous grants, journal articles, books, chapters in books, as well as a patent (U.S. Patent #7,828,552: Method and System for Designing Adaptive, Diagnostic Assessments, 2010), and she has accrued over 21,000 citations and h-index = 63 according to Google Scholar. For more details on her research and publications see http://myweb.fsu.edu/vshute/.