The Design of Learning Environments

The Design of Learning Environments (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2008) article indicated the importance of designing educational environments that comprise learning-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, and community centered elements. The section about assessments got me thinking about a conversation that I had earlier this semester with Dan, one of the other students in our class.

Our conversation took place the week after we read the How Experts Differ from Novices section of How People Learn, the online book that we have been reading for or class this semester. I expressed to Dan that I thought that perhaps our educational system would improve if we eliminated standardized tests and instead focused on meaningful knowledge acquisition. Dan had reservations about the degree of emphasis that the current educational system placed on standardized testing. Of course, he felt that there was a definite need for some kind of assessment. Nonetheless, I was starting to think that perhaps we did not need to conduct assessments at all, since most assessments did not seem to measure accurately the “degree to which the students’ knowledge is conditionalized” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2008, p. 31).

Upon reflection, I recognized that it was impractical to eliminate all assessments. For instance, how would universities determine who was qualified to enter academically rigorous PhD programs? Subsequently, while reading a journal article, Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games (Rice, 2007), for another paper, I realized that perhaps more covert assessments methods would be more valid indicators of students’ conditional knowledge. Rice (2007) suggests that certain complex video games that promote higher order thinking possess certain qualities, such as:
 Complex story lines “with characters that users care about”
 Allow “different ways to complete the game”
 Simulate “complex processes requiring adjustment of variable by users to obtain desired results or adjusting variables that produce different outcomes
 Require “synthesis of knowledge in order to complete”

However, by continually adjusting and responding to user input, perpetual covert assessment is an attribute that these games also possess. In effect, players receive assessment results of their conditionalized knowledge when they are promoted to more challenging levels, and eventually win the game.

Conversely, many educational applications contain overt quizzes or tests to assess a learner’s knowledge. Perhaps, embedding covert assessment techniques, which are similar to those used in many video games, would improve the efficacy of assessing conditionalized knowledge in educational applications.


Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L, & Cocking, R. R. (2008). How People Learn: How Experts Differ from Novices. National Academy Press. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6160&page=17
Rice, J. W. (2007). Assessing higher order thinking in video games. Journal of Technology & Teacher Education. 15(1), 87-100.