Giving Compass' Take:

• Emily Tate reports that researchers from MIT have identified playful assessment as a superior alternative to standardized testing. 

• How can funders help education leaders to better understand their assessment options and implementation strategies? 

• Learn about another alternative to standardized tests. 

In recent years, educators have spent countless collective hours designing, experimenting with and implementing new kinds of learning experiences for students—learning experiences that are fun, engaging and formative. But assessments haven’t evolved at the same pace.

As a result, there is a disconnect between what schools value and what they measure. But it’s a tough nut to crack, because many of the skills and characteristics treasured most are in fact the hardest to evaluate.

That’s why a team of education researchers at MIT has embarked on an ambitious project to address the missing link—measuring outcomes—that so often holds back new-age learning environments. They’re calling it “playful assessment.”

Playful assessment, not to be mistaken for gamification, seeks to capture student mastery in many of the areas that are hard to gauge. Louisa Rosenheck, a research manager at MIT with experience in game design, says the idea is to measure “all the things we say we care about”—like curiosity, creativity and critical thinking—but that traditional assessments miss. “By making assessment playful, we can get closer to measuring the things we actually value,” she says.

The beauty of playful assessment, she says, is that it can be done without interrupting the rhythm of learning, thereby alleviating student anxiety around testing. “Kids don’t even have to know they are being assessed,” Rosenheck tells EdSurge.

Read the full article about playful assessment by Emily Tate at EdSurge.