When Should Students Use AI? Let Them Design a Game

What if your next assessment asked students to pitch a board game—and explain when they chose to use AI?

In this episode, Tricia Friedman explores how game design can bring together research, persuasive writing, creativity, collaboration, and AI literacy. The central challenge: help students make thoughtful decisions about where AI supports their learning and where they want to work without it.

You don’t need time to develop an entire board game. Tricia introduces a smaller game-pitch challenge, using the history of the Spokane River as an example that educators can adapt to their own curriculum and local context.

Together, we explore:

• A task that asks students to choose three moments to use AI and two to work without it—and justify those decisions.

• How matching game mechanics to a researched theme creates opportunities for testing, feedback, and revision.

• Connections to ELA, humanities, art, and mathematics through persuasive pitches, visual design, pricing, and material costs.

• How game reviews, playthrough videos, and crowdfunding pitches can become texts worth studying.

• What it means to approach assessment redesign with both boldness and humility.

A question to bring to your next planning meeting: How could an assessment make students’ judgment about AI as visible as their final product?

Explore Tricia’s free GAMES framework and consider where a game-pitch challenge could fit into an upcoming unit.

https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/

Reach out: tricia@shiftingschools.com

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools