How are Assessments Designed in a Mastery-based System?

This is part of a set of articles that 2Revolutions developed for Mastery Assessment Week to feature some of the best and most applicable tools and courses from their InspirED platform, a social learning platform featuring a curated set of high-quality, free/open content resources to support educators in honing their educational practice.

If you are new to assessment and want to get a grounding in the basics, use this course on Assessment Foundations to develop your understanding of comprehensive and balanced assessment, inclusivity, formative assessment, and feedback.

If you already have a foundation of assessment literacy and want to understand key assessment practices within a mastery-based system, explore Performance Assessment Essentials. Performance assessment is a key practice within mastery-based systems, since performance assessments are complex tasks that allow educators to capture richer data about students’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This course provides an introduction to performance assessment and explores related key topics, including cultural responsiveness, Depth of Knowledge, authenticity, and transfer.

To jump into the deep end of performance assessment design, use The Performance Assessment Cycle to guide you through the process of creating, validating, implementing, and calibrating a performance assessment.

Finally, if you have a good grounding in performance assessment and want to extend your practice, explore Learner-Designed Assessments to learn how to co-design learning experiences with students that are equally as rigorous as a teacher-designed assessments and promote greater agency.