Level Up Your Classroom Assessments: Are You Game?

Lindsay Portnoy

Simulations, genius hours, and project-based learning have seen a dramatic rise in classrooms nationwide as educators aim to inspire and prepare a new generation of students. Yet, even as pedagogy shifts toward innovation and engagement, the metrics by which students are assessed are still largely predicated on the rote recall that characterized last century's assessments.

Assessment practices must transform to be meaningful to both students and educators. Meaningful metrics reveal new information to students and teachers: what went well, areas for improvement, and next steps for teaching and learning. What's more, assessments are most effective if they excite and engage our students toward continued growth. Formative assessment delivered through game-based learning can meet all these criteria.

Unlike traditional, summative assessments, games allow teachers to observe learning in real time and quickly pivot on instruction, meeting students where they are while actively scaffolding their growth. Shute and Kim (2014) find that games provide a method for "stealth assessments," because students are highly immersed, engaged, and interacting within game-based tasks. Games provide engaging experiences for students while producing salient metrics for teachers to improve instruction. Moreover, advances in the learning sciences and technology may soon render traditional methods of assessment obsolete, with games poised to take their place (Shute, Leighton, Jang, & Chu, 2016).

Using Games to Assess Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills in the Classroom

Self-regulation, collaboration, and problem solving are some of the many noncognitive skills that significantly enhance student success in cognitive domains (Kautz, Heckman, Diris, Ter Weel, & Borghans, 2014). That's why, beyond content knowledge or the cognitive domains we traditionally associate with success in academics, assessments must evaluate both cognitive and noncognitive skills to create a full picture of a student's progress. High-quality learning games offer a low-stakes and fun way to measure these cognitive and noncognitive skills, while inherently differentiating and targeting feedback based on the level of the player.

Story Cubes

In early education classrooms, young students can use story cubes to construct narratives by rolling dice to display different images that become prompts for oral or written story development. Students can work collaboratively or independently with story cubes, and teachers can scaffold the expectations of the task for different learners. For example, kindergarten students might work in classroom learning centers/stations or groups to coconstruct verbal stories or transcribe images and words to paper.

As students create their stories, they demonstrate collaboration, communication, phonological awareness, and a sense of narrative structures. Second graders might be challenged to use each image they roll in a sentence, as they create longer narratives and demonstrate their understanding of a story's beginning, middle, and end. Story cubes provide essential metrics on early childhood literacy, language, and inter-relational skill development.

Apples to Apples^™

In the card game Apples to Apples, students connect seemingly discrete topics. A judge places a green apple card that features a descriptive word, and students must choose the red apple card from their hand that best matches the word. For example, a judge might draw a green apple card with the adjective "beautiful" and one student might make the case that their red apple card "Pluto" matches that description, while another student argues for their submission, "pickles." This game is often silly but engages students in critical thinking, communication, vocabulary knowledge, and building consensus. Teacher Mike Astbury adapted the game mechanics of Apples to Apples to teach adjectives, nouns, and verb phrases in his English language learner classroom. Games like these serve as formative assessment by showing where students are struggling or are ready for a challenge, and can help students review for a summative test. Students show what they're learning by applying their knowledge in novel ways toward a goal, while working collaboratively in an enjoyable process.

Games with Real-world Applications

Skills like communication, creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking are heightened when students have a sense of purpose in our classrooms (Pink, 2011). This is why some of the most successful learning games encourage students to become citizen scientists, philanthropists, or social entrepreneurs, actively contributing to the solution of real-world problems.

In Fold.it, high school students fold proteins to solve puzzles. The students' work helps practicing scientists create treatments for deadly diseases, while students deepen their understanding of protein structures and functions. To date, nearly 60 thousand players worldwide have solved protein puzzles and were integral in solving an HIV enzyme riddle within only three weeks. Teachers assess student learning through observations, student presentations, and in real time through a class page on the Fold.it website, which documents each student's progress as they race to solve protein puzzles. Students playing FreeRice provide grains of rice to hungry nations as they learn across domains including chemistry, world languages, math, and the arts. A simple dashboard allows teachers to track student progress in the game, and teachers can create teams who challenge each other to think about global hunger and contribute the most free rice.

Redefining the Metrics that Matter

Games can be woven into existing curriculum to provide application for acquired skills and enhance students' knowledge of the world around them. Learning this way prepares students for a lifetime of collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking on complex issues across diverse domains. It's time to up our game and introduce students to novel ways of applying their knowledge. Are you game?

References

Kautz, T., Heckman, J. J., Diris, R., Ter Weel, B., & Borghans, L. (2014). Fostering and measuring skills: Improving cognitive and non-cognitive skills to promote lifetime success (No. w20749). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. London, UK: Penguin.

Shute, V. J., & Kim, Y. J. (2014). Formative and stealth assessment. In M. D. Merrill (Ed.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 311–321). New York: Springer.

Shute, V. J., Leighton, J. P., Jang, E. E., & Chu, M. W. (2016). Advances in the science of assessment. Educational Assessment, 21(1), 34-59.

Lindsay Portnoy is a cognitive psychologist, researcher, and chief learning officer at Killer Snails in Brooklyn, N.Y. She works and writes at the intersection of cognition, assessment for learning, and emerging technology.

ASCD Express, Vol. 13, No. 12. Copyright 2018 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.