Games as Tests: Where Does That Movement Stand?

Educators have advocated weaving testing and learning into games for years. Where does that initiative stand now?

The question occurred to me in reading Ethan Mollick writes highly engaging posts about a variety of subjects often intersecting with the world of education. In this recent post, he wrote, “Hire good gamers! Video game performance can act as a “stealth test” of real skills:

Good Civilization players have better management skills

Performance in MOBAs like LoL correlates with IQ

Guild leaders in World of Warcraft are more likely to be good leaders in real life”

Wow!

I know almost nothing about these games — and Mollick also points out in a follow-up posts some games Battlefield 3 that do NOT correlate with IQ.

So shouldn’t games be a dominant form of assessment and more importantly of learning? (Remember my mantra ‘No Tests but for Learning!’) Friends and former colleagues like Val Shute, Matt Ventura, Malcolm Bauer, and Diego Zapata-Rivera published on the advantages of games fifteen years ago as in this paper. Seven years ago, I co-produced this video executed by the astonishingly talented Sue Borchardt that in five minutes enabled Andreas Oranje, the current VP of Assessment & Learning Technology at ETS, to explain game-based assessment. Lots of people I knew studied the possibilities: Bob Mislevy, Tanner Jackson, Alina von Davier, Gabriela Cayton-Hodges, Carol Forsyth. And many more I apologize for not mentioning here.

But where do we stand now with the use of games? Please post links in replies here that may answer the question especially in the mode described by these researchers who explored the use of games for cognitive based assessment of, by, and for learning. Answers, please as to why we don’t see more about using games in this way.