James Paul Gee: Games as their Test
Filed at 1:03 pm on March 10, 2009 • 1 comments
In good video games, the game is already its own best test; no one needs to give a test after the game is over. Why can’t assessment work this way in other areas of learning?
MacArthur’s 21st Century Learning and Assessment project is composed of a national team engaged in a discussion of how digital media and digital learning can revolutionize how we think about assessment. This is now, of course, a nationwide discussion being taken up by a great many different parties. I am going to put up a few entries inspired by the project and I hope other team members will do so as well.
As a gamer, I have been struck by a paradox about assessment. If I play Halo on normal difficulty level and finish (without cheats), then you know I am a “proficient” Halo player. If I play it on hard and finish, you know I am very good indeed. It would be quite silly to take people who had finished Halo—especially on hard—and give them a “test” to see how good they were at the game. The game is already its own best test. The fact that someone finishes the game is a guarantee they are good at it.
Why doesn’t assessment work this way in other domains, e.g., in civics or physics? Most people will say—though I would not—that learning in school should be about content (i.e., “facts”, “information”) and learning in Halo is about doing things. But, in my view, all real learning—learning that leads to the ability to deeply understand and solve problems—is about doing and not “content”. Facts in physics are just tools to do physics (to solve problems and think about interventions in the world); facts in civics are just tools to engage in civic participation. Beyond doing, in this sense, facts are cocktail party fodder and not well retained.
So the question is why can’t we design learning in science (for example) so well that finishing it guarantees “proficiency”? In my view, the reason assessment does not work in school like it works in Halo is that we trust good game designers to create good learning more than we trust teachers to do so. And that is, in part, due to the fact that we view game designers as professionals, but we have ceased to view teachers as professionals.
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Comments (1)
1: E. C. at 2:51 pm on Wednesday, May 13, 2009
This is an intriguing idea, but it’s not clear how to implement it. Even in artificial domains, like computer games, assessment is not always as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. Winning the game in Halo is clear-cut; winning the game in World of Warcraft is less so.
In real domains, like civics and physics, it’s not clear what you’re looking for. What does it mean to “win” physics? Work in a lab all day? Get successful grants? tenure? the Nobel Prize?
There is a movement to include more authentic assessment in science classrooms. Check out project-based learning, or lab practical exams, or the modeling method. All of these methods involve the instructor as an evaluator, just as your artificial domain involves the game designers as evaluators, or professional physicists use peer reviewers.
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