Assessment without testing
Learning doesn’t have to stop when assessment begins. Teachers need data about student learning, but adding more tests isn’t the only option.
Rich environments for assessment and learning allow teachers to assess without traditional-looking tests, alleviating much of the pressure.
Rich digital environments, including games, simulations, and alternate reality learning experiences, have the potential to change the way educators teach and assess.
These environments promote student engagement, let students learn while their progress is being measured, provide immediate feedback to both the student and teacher, and reveal the processes students use to reach an answer, not just the answer itself.
In games, for example, players don’t stop what they’re doing to take a test. Instead, educators can gather information about how they manipulate objects, the order in which they complete an activity, and the choices they make throughout.
With this type of rich learning, teachers gather more information about student activity than they would from recording an answer selected on a multiple-choice test.
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This “invisible” assessment is a way to reduce the number of tests while increasing the amount of information available to students, teachers, and parents.
Games provide valuable insights
Records of player actions can also be combined with teacher observations and used to build relatively complex models that estimate which levels of performance students have and have not mastered.
Educators can learn all of this while students are continuously learning (playing the game) without administering anything that looks like a test.
Hear how the educational game SimCityEDU engaged more than 200 seventh and eighth graders.
Example: SimCityEDU
Rich environments allow educators to analyze skills that they might not otherwise be able to gauge. For example, games can help measure persistence — a factor that research has linked to successful academic outcomes.
This is difficult to do with a traditional multiple-choice test. But measuring learning in digital environments unlocks the ability to observe student learning in more authentic contexts.
Designed in partnership with GlassLab, Inc., and the assessment experts from Educational Testing Service and Pearson, the game SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! teaches students about the factors affecting the environment in a modern city.
It also provides formative assessment information about students’ ability to solve problems and explain the relationships in complex systems (a skill called systems thinking).
Actionable data
Teachers can track student learning and glean insights to adjust their instruction by reviewing the SimCityEDU reports.
For example, the “Shout Out! Watch Out!” report shows which students are in need of immediate intervention or reteaching and which students are excelling.
Student Testing in America’s Great City Schools: An Inventory and Preliminary Analysis
This report from the Council of Great City Schools presents the findings and analysis from an assessment practices survey. It also offers observations about testing in our school systems and how it might be improved.