Learning Modules
Our teacher learning modules and assessment-focused communities include videos and links to research, briefs, and worksheets from our Resource Hub.
Assessment Design Toolkit
The Assessment Design Toolkit (Toolkit) includes videos and supplemental materials to help educators write and select well-designed assessments. Although the primary audience is teachers and principals, district and State leaders can use the Toolkit to design professional development opportunities. The Toolkit was developed to respond to State requests for help to improve assessment literacy among educators. Assessment literacy is important for all teachers, especially for those teachers of non-tested grades and subjects who do not have State assessments to help them measure student growth. The Assessment Design Toolkit includes 13 “modules” divided into four parts (left).
Orientation: How to Navigate the Modules
The modules address how to plan, write, and select well-designed assessments. Each module includes a summary, a video, and supplemental materials. You can view the videos alone, in teams, or with entire faculties. The run time of the videos is shorter than the time we suggest you take to learn the videos’ content. You can pause the videos whenever you need an extra moment to think about what you have learned, and you can rewind them to revisit key concepts. This module will orient you to how the modules work.
Part I: Key Concepts
Measuring what students know and can do is an essential part of teaching, and, as much of teaching, designing assessments that measure what we want them to measure is sophisticated work. The first three modules provide an introduction to classroom assessment design, focusing on key concepts such as the five elements of assessment design, validity, reliability, purposes of assessment, and assessment items. By completing all of the modules, you will be able to plan, write, and select assessments in which you are confident, and that gives you a clear sense of what your students are learning.
Part II: Five Elements of Assessment Design
In the introductory module, we introduced the concept of five elements of assessment design—alignment, rigor, precision, bias, and scoring—and suggested that if the assessments you write or find elsewhere address these five elements effectively, those assessments stand a great chance of having an appropriate level of validity and reliability for use in your classroom. In this and the next four modules, you will learn how to recognize the effective use of these five elements and be well on your way to writing or selecting well-designed assessments for your students.
Part III: Writing & Selecting Assessments
The next series of modules focus on the types of items and assessments you can write or select: selected-response items, constructed-response items, performance tasks, and portfolio assessments. For some of you, this will be a review. Whether you are a novice or experienced assessment developer, we believe there’s enough helpful information here to help you make even more informed decisions about when to use specific types of items and assessments and how to improve the assessments you’ve already been designing so that the results of your assessments truly reflect all that your students are learning.
Part IV: Reflecting on Assessment Design
The final module focuses on the act of reflecting on assessment design. It provides a checklist that you can use to determine if an assessment appropriately addresses the five elements of assessment design.
Conclusion
Congratulations are in order! You have officially completed all 13 modules in the Assessment Design Toolkit and mastered most, if not all, of its content. Your hard work has paid off, and you should feel even better prepared than ever to write and select assessments that measure the knowledge and skills you want them to measure. Your students will benefit greatly from your hard work and assessment expertise. Good luck as you continue your career as an educator. Among the many complex skills you will demonstrate in every unit of instruction, count among them the capacity to write and select well-designed assessments.