21st. CENTURY EDUCATION-"TEACHERS OUT, LEARNERS IN" TEACHERS OUT LEARNERS IN BOOKLET | Page 90

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Stealth Assessment
The automatic data collection that goes on in the background when students work with rich digital
environments can be applied to unobtrusive, ‘stealth’, assessment of their learning processes. Stealth
assessment borrows techniques from online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft, in which the
system continually collects data about players’ actions, making inferences about their goals and strategies
in order to present appropriate new challenges. This idea of embedding assessment into a simulated
learning environment is now being extended to schools, in topics such as science and history, as well as to
adult education.
The claim is that stealth assessment can test hard-to-measure aspects of learning such as perseverance,
creativity, and strategic thinking. It can also collect information about students’ learning states and
processes without asking them to stop and take an examination. In principle, stealth assessment
techniques could provide teachers with continual data on how each learner is progressing.