assessment-design-orchestrator
Assessment Design Orchestrator
What This Skill Does
Helps teachers navigate the question "how should I assess this?" — a question whose answer depends heavily on what is being assessed, why, and in what context. The orchestrator presents five assessment design pathways, recommends a fit based on the teacher's situation, and coordinates the relevant component skills for the selected pathway.
Use this when the assessment decision is not yet made. If you already know you need a rubric, use criterion-referenced-rubric-generator directly. Use this orchestrator when the type of assessment itself is uncertain.
Do not use this orchestrator before learning goals are clear. Assessment design begins with the learning, not the instrument.
Evidence Foundation
The five pathways draw from well-established assessment research traditions. Formative assessment: Black & Wiliam (1998), effect size ~0.66, and Wiliam (2011). Authentic assessment: Wiggins (1998) and Sadler (1989) on criteria and feedback. Validity: Messick (1989) unified validity framework — the principle that assessment must measure what it claims to measure runs through every pathway. Peer and self-assessment: Topping (2009) meta-analysis and Zimmerman (2002) on self-regulated learning. Feedback: Hattie & Timperley (2007).
Evidence Space and Strength of Evidence
This is a composite practitioner framework. It coordinates several evidence-informed assessment traditions, but the exact pathway architecture — including routing logic, handoff structure, and integrated validity and equity checks — has not been evaluated as a complete intervention. Use it as an assessment design scaffold, not as a claim that this sequence reliably produces specified outcomes.