Assessment Design Checklist 3.0

When designing a learning experience, there are hundreds of concerns that run through the teacher’s mind. Confusion might be one word to describe it, but it often feels like multivariable calculus. Indeed, the lesson planning and assessment design process are best captured in the following gifs.

Fortunately, a class I am currently taking in the MAET program at Michigan State University on Assessments has a solution. The course has us create a checklist by which we can evaluate our assessment design for necessary affective components. The checklist only has five essential features to check for, but obviously, there are dozens of things that I would like to add. For now, five is more than enough! And that is because this is no mere check-box checklist, but one backed by research and evidence to the degree that it takes hours of work to get one item written out.

Throughout the iterative process, I designed three versions of this checklist. I can tell you that the hardest part has been getting the research and evidence right. Even then, I’ve found that so much of my thinking is intertwined concerning assessments. Indeed, I know that the components of effective assessment design are a web that interconnects and supports individual strains that together can capture and hold-up students and their learning. That’s where the metaphor ends because there is no bloodsucking and desiccation—sorry vampires out there. However, what I have written at times feels less like the intricate and beautiful web that I know it really can be and more like the Gordian knot.

Even though this assignment is coming to a close, I am determined to add other aspects to this checklist covering Universal Design by Learning (UDL), Depth of Knowledge (DOK), Understanding by Design (UbD), among many other concerns.

However, for now, here is the current version of my Assessment Design Checklist 3.0