Educational assessment designers are professional specialists who oversee the development and implementation of all-inclusive educational assessments. They are accountable for data evaluation, research integrity and project success. Some educational assessment designers focus on K-12 public schools, but others focus on higher education and corporate training.
Graduate Educational Assessment Designer
Many educational assessment designers are employed by universities to perform internal research. For example, some work with graduate business students, others work with PhD research students and some only work with faculty and administrators. These educational assessment designers are tasked with identifying new academic resources for colleges and professional development resources for students. For example, those who assess graduate business programs for professional development opportunities will recommend real-world content and activities. They may conduct research to benchmark existing internal resources or identify external, collaborative partners. Sometimes, they provide workshops for faculty regarding researching design, scientific skills and curriculum design.
Online Educational Assessment Designer
Educational assessment designers who deal with online learning platforms design and develop interactive web-based learning modules. To do this, they use traditional instructional designs, apply adult learning theories and incorporate cutting-edge instructive technology solutions. Some create online learning content for distance education courses, which require them to reformat existing training programs. They may also create completely new courses through adding new instructional materials to existing modules. Many of these self-paced online learning platforms use webinar lectures, educational games, interactive videos and embedded knowledge checks. Online educational assessment designers must be very familiar with the basic principles of instructional design, project management and web and digital media development.
The Essential Education
The majority of educational assessment designer jobs will require a master’s degree in curriculum, instruction or assessment design. These programs cultivate the skills needed to improve the quality of student, teacher and program assessments. These master’s programs are usually designed for working teachers who want to advance into different careers. Graduates will have the necessary skills to assume leadership roles related to research, assessments and administration. Typical classes cover research critique, differentiated instruction and educational ethics and statistics. They also offer classes on curriculum assessments, which train students how to benchmark achievements through curriculum mapping software, and academic portfolios, which show how to create performance assessments that document student achievements, according to ASCD.
What Qualities are Needed to Succeed?
Educational assessment designers should be familiar with the basic principles that promote quality evaluations: fairness, reliability, content validity and consequential relevance. Content validity refers to accurate assessment measures that strictly follow their intended purposes. Educational assessment designers maintain content validity through the three stages of assessment designs, experiences and questions. Simply put, assessment designs are managed by carefully constructed content outlines and quality assessment experiences depend on visually engaging and properly formatted tests. Educational assessment designers must create questions that measure specific skills and comprehension of concepts at different cognitive levels. Finally, educational assessment designers support content validity through following standard assessment designs, utilizing content review cycles and evidence-based design methodologies.
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Educational assessment designers do everything from creating new evaluation tools for professional development to designing self-assessment diagnostic tools to implement programs that digitally measure educational metrics.
