Designing Quality Assessment Tasks 

Understanding by Design Principles

Before designing individual tasks, it is worth spending some time considering how the suite of summative assessment will work for the unit. Coverage of curriculum is usually split between the tasks in some form, and individual tasks may lack in one criterion of Quality Assessment which is then made up for in other tasks. Prior planning should prevent any shortfalls at the unit level. 

The Understanding by Design Process (Wiggins and McTighe, 2011) might be a useful process here:

1. Identify the desired outcomes for students.  

Using the following: 

•  unit goals

• content descriptions

• Achievement Standards

• cross-curricular priorities

• general capabilities

2. Determine the acceptable evidence that the students have achieved the desired outcomes.  

This represents the suite of assessment tasks for the unit. Use the Quality Assessment Guidelines to help guide your task design. 

3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.

This represents your Programs of Learning. For further information on writing Programs on Learning see this online workshop. 

For further information on the Understanding by Design Process look here. 

Quality Assessment can be developed individually and collaboratively. Where assessment is developed individually it should be peer reviewed.  Assessment tasks should be considered through the lens of the student who will be doing the assessment. 

Strategies for moderating and meshing student results should also be planned and considered.