Oh, and they’re fun.

That sophistication — and a bit of that fun — may soon be coming to school assessments.

Educators and developers are increasingly looking to the digital world of games and simulations to make tests more stealthy, playful and, they hope, useful. In the process, the new assessments may also push schools to become more creative.

“The idea is: Can assessment be more embedded?” said Y.J. Kim, an at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Can assessment be more exciting? Can assessment be more flexible?”

In November, NWEA, which publishes the widely used , unveiled a 3D digital assessment on the popular that tests how well middle-schoolers have learned Newton’s .

The game, called Distance Dash, requires two students to work together to launch vehicles of different sizes and payloads. The goal: Get both to the finish line in perfect sync.

Students pick a skateboard, a bike, a grocery cart or an automobile, load each with different items, then collaboratively fine-tune the forces placed on them. The whole time, the game covertly measures several objectives, including whether students understand the principles of acceleration and how to apply optimal force.

Tyler Matta, NWEA’s vice president of learning sciences engineering, said the assessment grew out of the , which require students to analyze and interpret data and understand patterns.

He said helping design it was a stretch for NWEA test makers, who hadn’t previously worked with game designers. “We got to see what goes into building educational games, which was all very novel for us. We learned a ton.”

The organization is working with developer , which has produced . 

“As an assessment, it’s important that you actually have the ability to fail,” explained Filament’s Kenny Green, the project’s producer. The data it generates — for instance, how many times students tried and what modifications they made — are all important for teachers to see. 

The new exam appears as Roblox, the popular gaming platform, moves further into schools. Last October, it said it’ll to expand educational experiences on its platform, two years after an initial $10 million outlay. 

Rebecca Kantar, Roblox’s head of education, said physics lends itself well to such collaborative simulations. Distance Dash, she said, is “representative of the kind of team-based problem solving real scientists do when they’re working through a physics problem in real life.” 

Another recent development: In 2022, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development assessed creative thinking for 15-year-old students in more than 60 countries via the assessment, which boasts interactive items that allow students to submit drawings with a . 

The test also includes open-ended tasks with “no single solution but multiple correct responses,” organizers said. The first results are expected this year.

Advocates hope to someday make tests more personalized and, in many ways, indistinguishable from games, said Bo Stjerne Thomsen of the . “What we hope is that playfulness becomes a serious part of assessment,” he said.

Better still, more playful tests, he said, could open the door for schools to offer more creative, inquiry-based learning. 

He and others who are support the new tests don’t mince words: They envision a world where the kind of high-stakes, multiple-choice tests we all grew up with give way to assessments that for the first time allow teachers to capture a broader array of “non-cognitive qualities” such as teamwork and creativity, while keeping students focused on learning.

“Every time you try to pause an experience or stop a learning experience, it actually stops the engagement,” said Thomsen. It’s the same with play: “As soon as you start measuring play, the play stops.”

‘It’s about you engaging with someone else’

Tests can also be demotivating, even though they’re designed to help students show what they’ve learned, said Yigal Rosen, who led the creation of the PISA test.

He recalled interviewing fourth-graders who had taken NAEP science exams: At least one-third of the questions, according to students, were “super boring” and not engaging.

“They will skip them,” Rosen said. “They will just select ‘Whatever.’”

Now the chief academic officer at , the learning software company, Rosen recalled that when his team tweaked the NAEP test with a “playful version” that invited students to work together, he said, scores rose by 50%. “It’s no longer about you just responding to this dry prompt,” he said. “It’s about you engaging with someone else.”

When they think of playful assessments, most teachers probably think of digital tools like the popular learning platform , which allows teachers to create game show-like quizzes and polls that engage students on mobile phones and other devices. Louisa Rosenheck, Kahoot’s director of pedagogy, admitted that testing, for all its progress, is “still an underdeveloped, untapped area.” 

Digital tools like Kahoot that help teachers do informal assessments as they teach are helpful because they “feel more low-stakes” than traditional tests. “It’s very quick, it’s informative. You can get feedback very, very easily,” she said. “But the question types, the formats, often are still kind of discrete items.”

In that sense, she said, they don’t take advantage of what good games can do: Collect extensive data on students’ thinking and decision making — much more important indicators than whether they got the correct result. But that’s expensive, so many educational games simply assess how far a player gets and how many tasks or levels she completes.

‘Stealth assessment’

Researchers have been toying with the idea of more playful assessments for decades. Nearly 20 years ago, researcher began looking at ways to seamlessly weave tests directly into the fabric of instruction.

Shute devised the idea of “stealth assessment,” a system that discreetly tests students’ learning in interactive and immersive environments such as digital games. 

Aside from offering a less obtrusive way to measure learning, stealth assessment aimed to help with “flow,” the mental state in which a person is so engaged and exhilarated by a task that they forget they’re working. 

For most students, any exhilaration melts when test time nears.

“Assessment is inherently about power,” said the University of Wisconsin’s Kim. “Assessment is inherently about evidence and rules.”

By contrast, the new kinds of assessments empower students to challenge and question rules. In one proposed scenario, students in the PISA creativity test are asked to build a paper airplane, then come up with ideas to improve it.

In another, students design a “bicycle of the future,” suggesting three original improvements over standard bikes. Then they’re asked to tweak the design of a proposed anti-theft camera mounted on the bike. Finally, since the future bicycle is automatically powered, they must suggest “an original way to reuse or repurpose” the pedals.

“The idea should be original,” the test says, “in the sense that not many students would think of it.”

Kim has spent the past few years developing playful assessments for the classroom, originally with teachers, teacher trainees and game designers at MIT. Where Shute, her mentor at Florida State University, called it “stealth assessment,” Kim prefers the term “playful assessment.”

‘It’s a mind shift’

Kim has lately been testing something she calls the , a free, printable card game for teachers that Kim describes as “Charades meets Telephone” to teach the process of drawing conclusions from a chain of evidence.

In the game, players take on one of three roles: Performer, Observer or Interpreter. They can only see one of the other two players, and gameplay proceeds as the performer silently acts out, in three movements or less, what’s on a card. The observer takes notes on what she sees and determines how to tell the interpreter what she saw. 

Like many in the field, Kim said a big roadblock to more playful tests is that so many school systems use assessments for teacher evaluations. “At the end of the day, we are obsessed with the idea that ‘Assessment is score: score about performance and proficiency.’”

Meanwhile, for most educators, play “is not something that is productive,” she said. “So for teachers to kind of switch their mindset in terms of, ‘Assessment can be fun, and this is an assessment,’ it’s a mind shift.”

Combining core educational concepts with the challenges, community and excitement of competitive gaming, gameschooling empowers parents and educators to find fun ways to teach kids with varying learning styles. Minecraft and Roblox were popular prior to the pandemic when it came to teaching kids about everything from math and architecture to social skills, but the explosion of interest and alternatives over the past two and a half years has seen a new generation of students pair their workbooks and assignments with online meetups. 

Now there’s a national convention for that. 

This weekend, the online education platform Outschool is organizing , celebrating “gaming in all its forms: board games, video games, role play and more.” Running Friday through Sunday with a wide array of $1 sessions (the credit card ensures a parent has signed up the student), the gathering has carved out numerous opportunities for kids to go deep on specific games and to connect with industry professionals, as well as sessions that will allow kids to connect with a broader learner community and parents to talk with their peers about how games are being used to advance student skills. 

Some of the official attendees across the various stages will include representatives from LEGO Masters, Roblox and EA. The broader hopes for Outschool organizers: To inspire students to pursue their passions and network with like-minded peers through classes, games, tournaments and connections forged in special sessions with educators as well as gamers, artists, creators and industry professionals. 

“This is all about co-creating with learners,” said Fernando Tarango, Outschool’s lead community organizer for GameCon. “”We want to create an experience to inspire learners to continue their passions, find their next passions and dig in at a high level.” 

Designed for attendees ages 5 through 18, from kindergarten through high school, Outschool expects more than 2,000 students to participate in the virtual event. Any learner can join individual sessions after a parent signs them up and GameCon organizers emphasize that this is designed to be an interactive community event. 

“We will have a who’s who in gaming panels, trying to mimic the energy of an actual gaming convention,” Tarango says. Along with the speakers, expect to find Smash Brother tournaments, Minecraft servers, industry panels, artist galleries and a range of events meant to capture the energy found at an in-person convention. 

Launched in 2017, Outschool calls itself the Netflix of learning, a live online platform connecting students from around the world to other students and teachers in an array of classes that cover everything from core subjects to niche and creative interests. By building an interactive online model, Outschool gives students access both to teachers excited about subjects and to other students with the same interests, creating an online setting with a better than 80 percent attendance rate for classes that can range from one-offs to an entire semester in length.

At its launch, Outschool catered largely to homeschool students, but as conditions in schools have changed during the pandemic and the marketplace has grown, the platform has seen more families choosing classes after school, on weekends and throughout the summer. Some partnerships have also been forged with classrooms in innovative schools, as students in select programs can now also earn credits from Outschool curriculum. 

Outschool, named Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing education company in 2021, has seen class bookings increase 20-fold from 2019 to 2021 and now serves over 60,000 active learners per month. With over 115,000 available classes, Outschool has grown from 40 employees to over 150 during the pandemic. The group also started Outschool.org to help those who may not be able to afford Outschool classes, and have provided more than $3.5 million in free enrollments since the program began in 2020. 

Zakariya Awan, a 13-year-old Outschool participant in Tennessee, will be one of the GameCon participants, taking part in a public large-format interview with a group of friends. This session represents the influence of teenagers as online content creators. Awan says getting together online with friends across the country to create, whether music for a YouTube series or a new Minecraft world, offers a fun chance to commiserate and channel creativity. GameCon offers an opportunity to spread the word — and the joy. 

“I’m excited about all this cool stuff I get to do,” Awan says. “That is very fun. I could be making music for something in a video game with all my friends or using art. All my friends do the same and we get together on Discord to talk about what to do next, what to build next. It is very cool.” 

Tarango says he expects thousands of learners like Awan will get a chance to connect with peers, learn about new games, and forge new friendships through GameCon. “I imagine these are mostly going to be individual learners pursuing their own passions,” he says. “When kids are playing, they are learning. If they are playing together, they are learning together.”

Michelle Brooks, a LEGO Masters season two contestant, brings a touch of celebrity to the event. “It’s really neat for me to be part of an online learning model,” she says. “It’s something that has been a huge part of my family’s new way of schooling. This is also around the same time that my kids really embraced the world of gaming.”

Brooks says gaming became an important way to keep her kids connected to others during the pandemic and her LEGO Masters experience has given her a new perspective on using play as education. From her own retail store to teaching a LEGO elective at a hybrid school for sixth through eighth graders to connecting with people through conventions, she has “loved being able to share my art and love of building in these settings.” 

“I absolutely think gaming is a valuable education tool because it teaches a whole host of skills, including strategy, teamwork, conflict resolution and creativity,” Brooks says. “We really encourage being creative in our home and gaming is an incredible medium to explore creativity.”

The GameCon gathering features a mix of side stages for juniors, tweens and teens, along with multiple public lobbies where learners can interact directly with others. The “Main Stage” opportunities run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time throughout the three-day event and focus on both gaming (Super Smash Bros. and Minecraft are proving to be two popular options) sessions that can be of use to creators. 

Organizers hope the dual focus on gaming — both with tournaments and Minecraft servers — and content creation will provide various opportunities for play, learning and networking. The main stage will spotlight Super Smash Bros. and Minecraft each day of GameCon, alongside opportunities to learn more about LEGO Masters and Roblox from key names in the gaming industry, as well as other kids who play regularly. 

Outschool also hopes GameCon can highlight the long-term educational and career benefits of play-based learning. “Being at Outschool has opened my eyes to innovative ways educators are using video games to chess to card games to magic tricks,” Tarango says, “a whole way of using games and fun to drive that love for learning.” 

Here’s the full GameCon 2022 program: