What is Standardized Tests

In this chapter, I look at the relationship between games and assessment—and more broadly at what that tells us about the relationship between educational reform and technological change. Research already shows that with their ability to provide rich, complex, and compelling virtual worlds, well-designed computer games can teach players innovative and creative ways of thinking, deep understanding of complex academic content, and valuable forms of real-world skills. But, in the end, even effective games can only take students as far as the tests will let them go. If we want to use games to prepare young people for life in a changing world, we need to change how we think about assessment first. To address this challenge, in what follows I examine one way to think about assessing the development of innovative and creative thinking through game-play.