The MyWays Framework is a dashboard that concisely distills the major frameworks available today for deeper, richer definitions of student success. The 20 competencies are grouped in the four arenas of Content Knowledge, Creative Know-How, Habits of Success, and Wayfinding Abilities. (My ways exercise 3 slides 20151030v4 8)

1. 1
Exercise 3
Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition of Student Success
developed by Dave Lash & Grace Belfiore
for Next Generation Learning Challenges
Andrew Calkins, Deputy Director
October 30, 2015 DRAFT
MyWays is supported by a grant
from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
with additional support from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
© 2015 EDUCAUSE
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Putting MyWays to Work

2. 2
This is the third installment in a series of MyWays exercise packets.
Exercise 3: Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition
of Student Success
Exercise 3a: Mapping Assessments Across the Competency Arenas
Exercise 3b: How Well Do Your Projects Integrate a Variety of Assessments?
Quick link to the MyWays Beta Toolbox
Repository of all MyWays overviews, tools, and exercises.
For a detailed listing of documents, see the last slide in this deck.
Putting MyWays to Work

3. Putting MyWays to Work
The MyWays model, tools, and reports provide a
useful framework for design thinking & model building.
The MyWays model provides school designers,
teachers, parents, and students with a synthesis
of 20 student competencies needed for success
in college, career, and life. In addition, it offers a
set of simple, visual tools for mapping progress
towards those competencies. The tools can be
used to support strategic assessment, system
development, and system implementation at the
level of individual students, specific learning
experiences, or overall learning model.
MyWays draws on research across the broad
“student success” landscape to provide a
composite framework applicable to all students
regardless of academic aptitude or
socioeconomic circumstance, including those
students who must overcome the extraordinary
challenges of intergenerational poverty.
3

4. The MyWays project is attempting to help grantees and
school designers answer three big questions:
How well are we defining and articulating what success looks like
for students attending our school?
How well does our design for learning and the organization of our
school directly support students' attainment of that richer, deeper
definition of success?
How do we gauge students' progress in developing those
competencies? And: How can we measure and articulate our school’s
overall performance, beyond proficiency in ELA and math?
The exercises in this packet, 3a and 3b, address the third of these three big
questions—how well do our assessment activities support and gauge student
progress on broader competencies?
1
2
3
4Putting MyWays to Work

5. Recap: The MyWays model provides school designers,
teachers, parents, and students with a set of 20 student
competencies needed for success in college, career, and life.
5Putting MyWays to Work
Please see Putting MyWays To Work
Exercise 1 and the Introducing MyWays
overview for further information.

6. Situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
broadly describes many forms of formal and
informal learning that involve novices learning
from experts in authentic, real world settings—
a key ingredient we believe for acquiring the
competencies in the MyWays model.
Combining situated learning with other learning
science, David Perkins at Project Zero has
developed seven principles for whole game
learning—that is, maintaining the essence of the
authentic activity while creating conditions that
support novice advancement.
The resulting learning
experiences Perkins calls
“junior versions.”
Please see Exercise 2 and
the Whole Game Learning
overview for further
information.
6
Recap: Applying the seven principles of Whole Game Learning
enables development of the range of competencies and of agency
within meaningful, holistic learning experiences.
Putting MyWays to Work

7. 7
What should next gen assessment for broader
and deeper competencies look like?
The ability to “measure what we value” in a world that has shifted is a
mission-critical challenge to next generation educators. There is not yet a
finished blueprint for next generation assessment; no glossy catalog of
proven assessment tools and methods; no formula for replacing low-cost,
narrow accountability testing with thoughtful investments in gauging the
progress of the whole learner. On the other hand, there are pockets of
extensive research and some developing practice in measuring learning and
competency in specific settings and skill areas.
The Next Gen Assessment overview that accompanies this slide deck
provides a brief snapshot of the evolution taking place in assessment;
discusses two key paradigm shifts needed for the assessment of broader
and deeper competencies; and summarizes five recommended assessment
strategies that we believe are essential to success. Some, like formative
assessment and performance assessment, are already familiar to many
educators although their use in measuring competency arenas like Habits
of Success and Wayfinding Abilities are likely less familiar. The other
strategies—multiple measures, badges and micro-credentials, and quality
reviews of learning experiences—are important in handling both these
emerging arenas and wider learning settings
The goal of the overview, slides, and exercises in this Exercise 3 packet
is to help you build capacity to apply these strategies within your faculty
and staff.
Putting MyWays to Work
Truly, assessment can be a powerful
force for knowing our students… We
simply have to move past the baggage
that comes with the term assessment,
and understand that it can mean a lot
of things. We can assess for content
and skills, yes, but we can also assess
for passions, interests, success skills,
and the like for the purposes of the
right instruction at the right time.”
Andrew Miller
Edutopia blog

8. 8
The state of assessment today across the
broader competency range is fragmented,
uneven, and fails to support the goals of
next generation learning.
Some of the shortcomings in current
assessment practices have to do with the
narrow range of what is measured, but
much of the challenge arises from the nature
of the assessments commonly carried out,
even for traditional competencies, due to the
ongoing preoccupation with accountability.
For some aspects of agency, as well as some
Habits of Success and Wayfinding
competencies, there is little consensus on
valid, reliable, context-sensitive measures.
See the Next Gen Assessment overview for
much more on this topic.
Putting MyWays to Work
Assessment today varies widely across the four competency
arenas with growing attention on Creative Know How and Habits
of Success.

9. 9
Two key paradigm shifts are needed for an effective,
nuanced assessment of broader and deeper competencies.
To measure broader and deeper
competencies comprised of both
capability and agency will
require new approaches to
assessment. Not only must we
begin to assess hard-to-measure
competencies like creativity,
social skills, and wayfinding
abilities; we must also gauge
how well students “own” these
competencies and apply them in
real-life settings.
Next generation assessment
systems that can address this
challenge are some ways in the
future. The crucial first step for
next generation educators, we
believe, is to adopt these two
paradigm shifts in assessment
practice.
Putting MyWays to Work

10. Standardized
Student Assessments Tasks in the Outside World
Knowledge is: Measured within a subject
Applied across disciplines, along with other
skills, to solve real world problems, create
products, and generate new knowledge.
Asked to
address:
Facts and application of
simple procedures to
well‐defined problems
Complex, disorderly problems in real world
contexts.
Work is done: Individually
Individually and in groups of others with
complementary skills to accomplish a shared
goal.
Resources
available:
Without access to outside
information, and use only
paper and pencil
The challenge is to evaluate information
from a wide range of tools and resources to
find what’s relevant to analyze problems
and create solutions
10
The Shift to Greater Authenticity requires moving from poor
proxies to measures of competence in tasks similar to those performed in
the outside world. See the Assessment Overview for further information.
Putting MyWays to Work
Adapted for the Stupski Foundation from Transforming Education: Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Skills (Cisco, Intel, Microsoft), 2010

11. A substantial majority of the
competencies identified in the
MyWays model require a
combination of thinking skills and
real world abilities. Not surprisingly,
in the arenas of Creative Know How,
Habits of Success, and Wayfinding
Abilities, in particular, “textbook
learning” is insufficient.
This “field of learning” is a useful
visual device for envisioning both
learning and assessment activities in
terms of the thinking skills and real
life abilities they engender. For
example, the Mayan Community
Project discussed in this packet is at
the high end of the thinking skills
axis while spanning both simulated
and bounded authentic settings.
The following two slides map
traditional assessments and a
broader, deeper student experience,
helping highlight those learning
activities that encompass both
higher-order thinking skills and real
world abilities.
Bloom’s Thinking Skills
The “left field” axis uses Bloom’s taxonomy to
key a familiar progression of thinking skills.
While technically the taxonomy is not a
hierarchy, in our usage here, the skills are
cumulative as one moves out the axis:
Applying, for example, includes Remembering
and Understanding while Creating includes all
five of the “earlier” skills.
Real World Abilities
The “right field” axis indicates growing competence
as the authenticity of the setting increases. For
example, a particular middle schooler might be
competent in Self-Direction or Communication &
Collaboration within “simulated authentic”
settings, such as those within school, but not in
“complex authentic” settings in the adult world.
This progression also allows specific learning
activities to be plotted by degree of authenticity.
11
Recap: Mapping learning and assessment activities along two crucial axes
For mapping of learning experiences on the same field, see Exercise 1.
Putting MyWays to Work

12. Traditional assessments, especially most state testing, focuses on performance
on non-authentic measures like multiple choice questions. Better state tests and
AP include essays that enable students to construct responses at higher orders
of thinking, but do not incorporate more complex, authentic contexts or settings.
Putting MyWays to Work 12
NOTE: A set of field of learning slides is available for your use including an empty grid for your own plots.

13. Assessment of broader & deeper competencies is only fully possible through
measurement embedded in whole game learning approaches involving rich
simulation, extended projects, or immersion in real world settings – contexts
that increase the development of student agency, capability, and adaptability.
Putting MyWays to Work 13

14. The Shift to Multiple and Varied Measures requires moving
from single, narrow assessments to multiple forms of measurement that
are more varied, more developmentally-nuanced, and better integrated.
While one can envision basic mastery of multiplication
tables being confirmed by simple quizzes or tests,
assessing broader and deeper competencies like
creativity, social skills, and wayfinding abilities requires
a more multifaceted approach.
Because multiple forms of measures for any given
competency are not the norm in traditional school
models, we turn to state driving requirements for new
drivers as a concrete and familiar example of such a
system. At first blush, one might associate the road test
as the qualifier for getting one’s license. However, over
the past century, states have evolved systems of multiple,
mandatory requirements to ensure the safety of drivers,
passengers, and the public.
Putting MyWays to Work 14

15. How do we assess important life skills?
The “driving test”
Putting MyWays to Work 15
Learning to drive is one important real
life skill, for which a mature system of
learning, assessment, and certification
has been developed over time.
Think about one example, the
Massachusetts driving test. To the left
we list the common components of the
test, and on the following slide, we
analyze what kinds of assessment
experience are embedded in each
component, and how they come
together as an integrated system.
MA Requirements Assessment involved
Written test of road rules –
to get permit
30 hours of classroom
instruction, with test at end
Computer simulations
6 hours of official driving
observation
12 hours of official driving
practice
40 hours additional practice,
usually with parents
2 hour parent education class
The Road Test

16. How do we assess important life skills?
The “driving test” as a system of multiple, varied
assessments embedded in a learning experience
The MA “driving test”
is actually
a series of assessment-
embedded learning
experiences with multiple
forms of measurement,
addressing content
knowledge, application, and
creative know how, through
authentic performance.
MA Requirements Assessment involved
Written test of road rules –
to get permit
Multiple choice, fact based; summative
gateway to learner’s permit
30 hours of classroom
instruction, with test at end
Formative feedback; scenarios for
understanding of skills, consequences ;
summative test on simple analytical
Computer simulations Incorporating application of knowledge
and skills
6 hours of official driving
observation
Introduction to the authentic learning
environment; group/peer learning
12 hours of official driving
practice
Practice loops in authentic environment
with instant instructor feedback
40 hours additional practice,
usually with parents
Practice loops in varying circumstances
- different adult, different car -
confirming transfer
2 hour parent education class No assessment. Requirement is
“programmatic”/seat time
The Road Test Performance-based assessment in
complex, authentic environment
Putting MyWays to Work 16

17. Similarly, a “next generation” system of learning assessments
will need to integrate the use of five key strategies.
Integration of these strategies will align
assessment with holistic learning, and
help gauge and guide learner progress
towards the new, broader goal-line:
Formative assessment
To provide the essential foundations for
effective learning & personal development
Performance assessment
To provide the rich context for development
and measurement of Agency as well as
Capability
Multiple & varied measures
To address the whole learner and the breadth
of competencies within Next Gen leaning
environments
Badges & micro-credentials
To integrate “anywhere, anytime learning”
within personalized learning approaches
Quality reviews
To ensure the quality of the learner
experience when outcomes can’t be
measured (and even when they can)
Putting MyWays to Work 17

18. Going deeper with the
five assessment strategies
For each of the five strategies, the Next Gen
Assessment overview includes a one-page
primer, like the one to the right. These primers
are not intended to be comprehensive nor to
provide in-depth analysis of the technical merits
of each strategy, but rather to get design teams
thinking and discussing the level of variety,
nuance, and integration needed to develop
assessments for broader and deeper
competencies.
Each includes brief notes on:
f-- Why the strategy is important
-- Examples of this type of measurement
-- Comments “through the MyWays lens”
-- A few resources as food for thought
The overview also includes a one page summary
chart of all five assessment strategies for
reference. Deeper exploration of the strategies
will be provided in forthcoming practice
briefings.
Putting MyWays to Work 18

19. 19
It is important to stress that the
use of all five assessment
strategies extends across all the
MyWays arenas & competencies.
What will not work, we are
certain, is to try to isolate each of
the 20 competencies and create a
(likely inauthentic) way to assess
each one! Indeed, educators
would not even want to take each
of the four MyWays arenas and
chose a different assessment
strategy to address each of those.
That being said, the Next Gen
Assessment overview provides
a summary of considerations
for assessing in each arena, like
the one to the left, that
summarizes:
-- The current state of assessment
-- Main approaches currently being
used & new approaches being tried
-- Challenges of particular relevance
Putting MyWays to Work
For those charged with designing learning and its environment,
issues relating to assessment approaches vary somewhat across
the four competency arenas.

20. 20
As Angela Duckworth and David
Yeager urge, at the end of
Measurement Matters:
“Given the advantages, limitations, and
medium-term potential of such measures,
our hope is that the broader educational
community proceeds forward with both
alacrity and caution, and with equal parts
optimism and humility.”
The Next Gen Assessment
overview provides a glimpse at the
ways the field is moving forward,
covering:
-- Cautions
-- Promising developments
-- Ways to work together, including:
- Improvement communities
like Carnegie’s SAIC and
NGLC’s ALP
- Partnerships between schools
and assessment experts
- Adaptation of approaches from
other sectors
Putting MyWays to Work
The field of next gen assessment is still emerging. Careful thought is warranted
about the use of various assessment measures, especially for agency and Habits of Success;
nevertheless, given the importance of these broader competencies, it seems equally
important to avoid “analysis paralysis” and forge ahead in collaborative and thoughtful ways.

21. Exercise 3a:
How well is your school currently
employing the five strategies that
support next generation assessment?
These exercises are designed to help you use
MyWays and the five assessment strategies
to address the third big question:
How do we gauge students' progress in
developing those competencies? And: How
can we measure and articulate our school’s
overall performance, beyond proficiency in
ELA and math?
Review the Next Gen Assessment overview
before tackling the exercises.
21
Exercise 3a and 3b
Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition of Student Success
Exercise 3b:
How well is your school using elements
of the five strategies to assess student
progress within your learning projects?

22. Use the tools on the next two slides as checklists to aid you in
evaluating and improving assessment experiences with respect to:
• The shifts to greater authenticity & multiple and varied measures
• The five assessment strategies most relevant to promoting the
expanded success definition
• The 20 MyWays competencies
The goal is to equip your assessment design team with a reliable
process for critiquing emerging assessment approaches—strengthening
the extent to which you integrate your assessment with your learning,
move towards more authentic tasks, and increase the range of
assessment approaches in order to address broader and deeper
competencies. Even at a quick, conceptual level,
these tools can flag key issues and “help
change the conversation” within your
team with respect to transforming
assessment as a force for teachers
to better know their students and
how to guide them, as well as for
learners to get to understand
themselves more fully.
22
Using the tools in tandem to develop assessment design
as integrated as your definition of student success
Recapping the earlier exercises
Exercises 3a and 3b build on the exercises
in packets 1 and 2.
Exercises 1a and 1b explored the MyWays
competency model, first comparing your
school’s student success definition to
MyWays and then using the MyWays
Competency Plotting Tool to generate a
spider plot of an individual’s current
strengths, needs, and goals across the full
set of MyWays competencies.
Exercises 2a, b, and c utilized the whole
game learning principles to explore how
well your learning projects reflect those
principles, harness the benefits of junior
versions, and map to the MyWays
competencies.
Of course, your competency objectives,
learning design, and assessment design all
work together—and the seven MyWays
tools presented in these exercises can be
used in multiple ways and combinations.
Exercise 3a and 3b — and a case study demonstration

23. 23Exercise 3a Employing the five strategies that support next gen assessment
Exercise 3a.
How well is your school currently employing the
five strategies that support next gen assessment?
Assemble a team to evaluate the assessment strategies you
use in each of the four competency arenas.
Read and discuss the Next Gen Assessment overview to
more fully understand the two shifts and five assessment
strategies. It is important for group members to be working
from the strategy descriptions provided, rather than from
individual interpretations of the strategy titles.
Download the Assessment-Competency Correlation Tool
from the MyWays Beta Toolbox.
Working as a group, list the various assessment methods
your school is using currently for each arena. Capture
especially methods designed to assess student performance
in the outside world (authenticity); but also note that not all
strategies need be employed in each arena. Discuss and
describe strengths and problem areas worthy of attention.
Discuss the completed worksheet. Come up with a joint
analysis of areas of strength and needed improvement.
Generate an action plan based on that analysis.
Use the MyWays competency arenas to analyze your
overall assessment system.
Note: you can also do this analysis at the more detailed
level of each competency. Detailed worksheets for each
arena are provided.
Objectives: Gaining familiarity with the five strategies;
visualizing your assessment strategies across your learning
model; identifying areas for strengthening or augmenting
Enlarged on next slide

24. 24Exercise 3a Mapping Assessments Across the Competency Arenas

25. 25Exercise 3b Using the five strategies to assess student progress
Exercise 3b.
How well is your school using elements of
the five strategies to assess student progress
within your learning projects?
This exercise in analyzing how multiple assessment
strategies are used within a specific learning project
is best understood by reviewing the demonstration
using the Mayan Community Project.
Assemble a team to evaluate one of your existing
learning experiences. We suggest selecting a multi-
faceted experience (a junior version) that runs a
semester or more.
Read and discuss the Next Gen Assessment
overview, including descriptions of the five
strategies (important to work from shared
understanding of them) and Mayan demo.
Download the Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool
from the MyWays Beta Toolbox.
Working as a team, describe how each of the five
assessment strategies is used (or not used) to assess
student progress within that learning project.
Record strengths and weaknesses within each
assessment strategy. (See the Mayan demo for
guidance.)
Discuss and come up with a joint analysis and
action plan based on that analysis.

26. 26A case study demonstration of exercises 2a, b, and c
Introducing the
Mayan Community Project
The Next Gen Assessment overview demonstrates the
use of the Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool in
performing an evaluation of assessment practice in the
same project as the one used for demonstration of the
learning design tools introduced earlier in Exercise 2.
In this slide deck, we have excerpted a brief synopsis of
the Mayan project itself along with just one section of
the completed worksheet for 3b.
We encourage you to look for the full demo, including
extensive assessment strategy worksheet, in Next Gen
Assessment—as well as to connect all of this to the
Mayan project learning design demo in the Whole Game
Learning overview. While we have addressed learning
and assessment separately within this series, the two are,
rightly, deeply integrated in the design and
implementation of the Mayan project.
A case study demonstration of exercise 3b

27. Summary of the Mayan Community Project
 An extended, interdisciplinary project with individual & group research
on the Mayan culture and Mayan areas of present-day Guatemala
 Application of knowledge to collaborative writing & illustration
of a children’ alphabet book on the Mayan culture
 Publication, marketing and sales of copies of the book to fund schooling
for seven Guatemalan students from impoverished families
• Essential questions: Why is it important to learn about the Mayan civilization today? How are books published
and marketed? What is life currently like for people of Mayan descent?
• Learning goals include: knowledge of Mayan culture, the reality of poverty in Central America, skills in writing
and editing for publication, actual experience of job roles in the publishing process, business planning, marketing
& sales, and the empowerment of “how to make a difference in a child’s life”!
• Process is in-depth and over time: 12-week project, with approximately 2 hours class time/day, group and
individual research, 2-3 revisions of book pages, student choice of research topics & job roles.
• Authentic, culminating experiences and assessments: Peer editors wielding the “Changes Needed” or
“Approved” stamps, “Book Signing” (exhibition), and book selling activities in and with the local community.
27A case study demonstration of exercise 3b

28. 28A case study demonstration of exercise 3b
This is the first of
five sections of the
assessment strategy
analysis for the
Mayan Community
Project.
You can find the full
analysis in the Next
Gen Assessment
overview.

29. 29
All files associated with these exercises can be found at the MyWays Beta Toolbox.
Related reading
This slide deck
Next Gen Assessment overview
Tools
Assessment-Competency Correlation Tool (for Exercise 3a)
Assessment Strategy Analysis Tool (for Exercise 3b)
MyWays Field of Learning slides
Forthcoming Reports
The MyWays Model: A Composite of Student Competencies for Success in College, Career, and Life
Foundations of the MyWays Model: A Brief Summary of Student Success Research
MyWays by Design: A Set of Practice Briefings on Learning and Assessment for Broader and Deeper Competencies
Simple Tools for Using MyWays in Your School Community
Resources for Exercises 3a & 3b
Assessment Design as Integrated as Your Definition of Student Success