The Teacher’s Guide to Sound Assessment Design

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent efforts.” – John Ruskin 

As a teacher, you know how vital assessment is to your students’ academic success. Assessment paints a clear picture of where your students stand in their education. They give you insight into student strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. And they provide you, the instructor, with a better idea of how effective your instruction is.  

Creating your assessment system also involves ensuring its quality. It isn’t enough to increase the amount of assessments in the classroom.  

They must also be high quality.  

But how do you do that? 

This blog explores ways you can focus on assessment quality using Sound Assessment Design.     

What Is Sound Assessment Design? 

Sound Assessment Design is the process of varying assessment methods to give students practice, or to accommodate different learning styles.  

Your students are like snowflakes-all unique!  

With such a wide range of personalities and learning styles in your classroom, it would be doing everyone a disservice to make assessments uniform.  

Key Principles for Assessment Quality 

Let’s review the five guiding principles and questions you can ask yourself when surveying your assessment.  

Have a Clear Purpose 

Your assessment needs to have a clear purpose. Assessment results help guide instructional decisions, so having a purpose is essential. 

An assessment may be for measuring the progress of your students. Or perhaps it’s for a physical grade.  

Getting clear on the why will help guide the rest.  

You’ll need to identify the following: 

• Who is using this information? Teachers, students, parents, or someone else?  

• How will they use it? For measuring progress, or for a grade? 

• What information, and in what detail, is required? 

Set Clear Targets 

Next, you’ll need to create targets for what you expect of your students with each lesson or unit.  

We’ll get into choosing an appropriate assessment method for a learning target later on.  

But before you can do that, you can ask yourself: 

• Are these learning targets clear to teachers? To students? 

• What kind of achievement are you assessing? 

• Are these learning targets the focus of instruction? 

Evaluate with Sound Design 

We covered what sound design is above, but how can you check an assessment for soundness? 

By asking these questions: 

• Do the assessment methods match your learning targets? 

• Does the sample represent learning? 

• Are your items, tasks, and scoring rubrics high quality? 

• Does the assessment control for bias? 

Use Effective Communication 

Communication is key when it comes to learning. When planning how you’re going to relay the results of an assessment to a student, you’ll have to be clear on the following: 

• Can assessment results help guide instruction? 

• Do formative assessments function as effective feedback? 

• Is achievement tracked by learning targets and reported by standard? 

• Do grades communicate achievement? 

• Are assessments reliable and valid? 

Promote Student Involvement 

Students should be involved in their own learning process. You’ll need to make sure that how you’re planning assessment makes sense to them, too.  

Ask yourself: 

• Do assessment practices meet students’ information needs? 

• Are learning targets clear to students? 

• Will the assessment yield information that students can use to self-assess and set goals? 

• Are students tracking and communicating their evolving learning? 

Assessment Methods 

Once you understand the principles discussed above, you can move on to choosing a method for your assessment.  

There are four main types of assessment methods. 

• Selected Response: Students select the correct answer from a list of possible answers. Examples include multiple-choice questions, true/false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank questions. 

• Written Response: Students craft a response to a question or task. Examples include short answer items and extended response items.  

• Performance Assessment: Evaluates students based on observation and judgment in real time. Examples include performance tasks and performance criteria.  

• Personal Communication: Evaluates students based on how they perform in communication engagement. Examples include asking questions during instruction, interviews and conferences, participation, oral exams, and student journals or logs.  

Matching Assessment Methods to Learning Targets  

The Target-Method Match chart below serves as your guide to choosing an appropriate assessment for your learning targets.  

This chart consists of four major assessment methods and four types of learning targets. 

For example, let’s say one of your learning targets is to have students tell a story or recount a specific experience with facts and descriptive details. You also want them to speak audibly in coherent sentences.  

According to the chart, Personal Communication would work best in this scenario.  

Remember that the more information provided by one assessment item, task, or exercise, the fewer items needed to cover a domain.  

Keep a copy of this chart on hand if you’re ever stuck choosing a method!  

Developing a Quality Assessment 

Regardless of the learning target and method of assessments, they all must go through a development cycle to ensure quality.  

Step 1: Planning the Assessment 

The first step in the development cycle is to decide who you’ll be assessing, and whether this is a formative (for the student’s own learning) or summative (for a grade) assessment.  

Then, identify the targets and choose the appropriate assessment method(s).  

Finally, figure out the sample size by asking what the relative importance of the standards or learning targets assessed are, and map out how you will sample student learning.  

Note that the broader the scope of the target or the greater its complexity, the larger the sample should be.  

Step 2: Developing the Assessment 

This is where it all comes together! In this stage, you’ll be selecting items, tasks, and scoring procedures for your assessment.  

You should also be evaluating assessment quality during this stage.  

Step 3: Use the Assessment 

Now the planning is finished and assessment can begin! Here you’ll be conducting the assessment and scoring accordingly. 

Don’t forget to revise as needed, for future use.  

Using Standards as a Blueprint for Planning Decisions 

Creating or choosing an assessment without having a blueprint often results in mismatches between the instruction and the assessment. This can create a validity issue.  

You should be sure to review any standards before creating your assessment. Check out the Common Core State Standards Initiative for an example of standards. Or, you can check out your local state standards.  

Once you’ve reviewed your standards, you can use them to directly inform your assessment for learning and student involvement activities.  

With this information, you can: 

• Differentiate instruction after a quiz or test. 

• Share standards with students to create learning targets, and ask them to identify where each instruction fits. 

• Have students write practice questions as a form of focused review.  

Summary 

Each assessment method is different. But they each bring their own unique strengths and limitations, much like your students! 

Applying these techniques will ensure your classroom is a productive and effective environment for all. And using Sound Assessment Design, the Assessment Development Cycle, and Blueprints will provide you with the most accurate results.  

Remember: quality over quantity! 

Author: Brianna Carignan