Game Design Could Transform Assessment in the AI Era

What if students didn't simply complete an assessment—but designed an experience for someone else?

In this episode of Shifting Schools, Tricia Friedman pitches Jeff Utecht a new approach to assessment for the AI era: invite students to become game designers.

Games are memorable, social, challenging, and full of consequential choices. Designing one asks students to think about systems, understand an audience, establish meaningful constraints, gather feedback, solve problems, and defend the decisions they make. Those may be precisely the capabilities that matter most when AI can help produce a polished final product.

Tricia introduces the GAMES learning-design framework:

• Goal: What should players understand, practise, or accomplish?

• Audience: Who is the game being designed for?

• Mechanics: What rules, choices, and constraints make it work?

• Engagement: When do players experience agency, challenge, or frustration?

• Show It: How did testing and revision improve the game?

Check it out: https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/

Jeff and Tricia also explore how teachers and students can intentionally decide where AI belongs in the design process—and where the thinking should remain entirely human.

Along the way, they discuss centaur chess, systems thinking, authentic audiences, collaborative games, playtesting, vibe coding, and why assessment should increasingly examine a learner's judgment and reasoning rather than only the finished product.