Stealth Assessment

Abstract

Traditional classroom assessments are usually summative, but they are constrained in terms of items and time, and can trigger anxiety. As such, they are not well-suited to accurately assess what’s been learned and they rarely engender learning. Stealth assessment is a type of formative assessment, which occurs while a person is actively engaged in learning activities, and is intended to resolve many of the problems related to summative assessments. In this primer, we briefly describe stealth assessment, provide lessons learned via research in this area, and discuss issues and future directions of this work. Resources are provided that further expand on aspects of this stealth assessment approach.