Stage 5 of 10 · Design and release
Assessment first
What evidence will show the learner can do it?
The failure it prevents Content that teaches what is never assessed, and the reverse
Assessment first is the core of the model: design the assessments before the learning content. Learning materials then exist to produce outcomes a learner can demonstrate, not the other way round. This is backward design applied as a working rule.
A realistic simulated workplace or case study gives every assessment a consistent, plausible context. The same organisation, people and documents can carry every task in the program.
What happens
- Write the assessment tasks, instructions and conditions.
- Write the marking guides: what a satisfactory response contains, with benchmark answers where they help.
- Build the simulated workplace or case study the tasks draw on.
- Purpose
- Write the assessments and the context they sit in.
- What it produces
- Assessment tasks, marking guides, a simulated workplace or case study
- Exit gate
- Compliance, pedagogy and subject-matter sign-off
At the gate, ask
- Does each task produce the evidence the matrix says it will?
- Would two assessors mark the same response the same way from the guide?
- Is the scenario realistic for the cohort named at Discover, and are permitted adjustments written down?
- Have compliance, pedagogy and subject-matter reviewers signed off? (How formal each sign-off is depends on where you work.)
The purpose, artefact, exit gate and failure come from the paper's stage table. The question, what happens and the gate questions are this site's guidance.