ASSESSMENT (evaluation)
—
RECEIVE A CALL TO DISCOVER MORE
‘Curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment - in that order’
Dylan Wiliam, 2023.
‘Evaluations are about making the learning visible. Or more precicely: getting evidence about behavior change in students.’ Tyler 1947, 104-125.
Are you curious for more? Would you like to get in touch? Feel free to contact our lead directly for any questions or inquiries you may have. tikvah@studioblended.com +31 6 42 47 29 69
Assessment has swung back into the attention to be so much more than just formative and summative assesmment.
AI is showing the vulnerabilities of assessment in particular, and requires us to reflect again about our learning objectives. ‘Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming higher education, revealing both opportunities and vulnerabilities in the way we assess student learning. Suddenly, the way we’ve always assessed student learning doesn’t feel quite so solid anymore’ (Risbo 2025).
It is not straightforward at all, and a huge challenge to course and degree coordinators (and all teaching staff involved), how to exactly change assesment in the presence of AI.
As the University of Sydney (2025 in Risbo MicroLab AI and assessment 2025) writes: ‘Some level of assessment redesign is required across almost every unit to both manage the risk of generative AI and provide students with opportunities to engage with it productively and responsibly. In a world where AI is inescapable, assessments should both assure learning in secure settings, and adapt to the reality of AI in other settings, as appropriate to each discipline.’
We likely need to revisit the constructive alignment in our course or degree, because AI changes our approach to the assessment. Or to put it differently, assesment is a good angle to start with revisiting our education, as AI most likely impacts that. As soon as we change something about our assessment - we must revisit the learning objectives too.
Our technical approach to curriculum design is based on ‘constructive alignment’. You achieve it with backward design, which has proved to be a robust technique for design. We go over and beyond mere learning activities, by partnering with you and crafting big ideas, understanding and knowledge statements in your knowledge domain, coupled with skills and capabilities. We strategize content for well into the coming decade. Source image: Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
But there is more, even with or without AI coming to the scene. Assesment is reinvisioned to be so much more than the classic excercise or test: ‘Guess what the teacher wants to hear’ (Stabel 2025). Stabel (2025) continues and writes: ‘We need to talk about how we can reorganize education around a conversation about development, growth, and craftsmanship. Hasn't it been our job—for a long time—to educate curious, critical, open-minded, and responsible people who make a difference in society?‘
This last question exactly is the paradigm shift and winds of change (or revival) we see in assesment today. It also leans towards the upcoming ‘regenerative education’ or ‘purpose-driven learning experiences’, which is all about systems change (see i.e. Cardozo, Berg, Wessels 2025). Even as, as Taveras-Dalmau et al. (2025) write ‘Regeneration holds great promise, but without reflexivity, it risks becoming an ideology that replicates the very paradigm blindness it seeks to overcome.‘ What then is the promise of this new curriculum approach?
Stabel (2025) writes: ‘If we truly want to make an impact [on traditional Higher Education], we must all move towards more development-oriented, programmatic assessment, where we gain a complete picture of the student. This also creates so much more room for craftsmanship, for human interaction (as opposed to AI).‘ And he continues: ‘Our true goal (is): educating people who can make an impact in the world.’
Meanwhile, there is so much out there on assesment, but what is the origin of it? Simply, evaluation. Making the learning visible. Or more precisely: getting evidence about behaviour change in your learners (after Tyler 1947).
Right after the identification of learning objectives, in constructive alignment, comes assessment. How are you going to make the learning visible, so that you can evaluate it?
There is an interesting instructional illusion here too (after Kirschner, Hendrick & Heal 2025, p. 45-50): the easy-win illusion - and the way to solve it [based on cognitive science] is: desirable difficulties. ‘One of education’s most seductive misconceptions is the belief that learning should be effortless.’ (...) And as educators we may strive to make learning as easy as possible, we like to have ‘student evaluation systems that reward quick performance over lasting learning, and educational technology that promises ‘painless’ learning over the real work of improving.’ But, ‘the reality is that true learning only happens when we expend mental effort during learning. Learning requires deep processing of what we are to learn. And this deep processing requires mental effort.’
‘The key idea’, write Kirschner, Hendrick & Heal (2025, p. 47) is that the conditions that most rapidly increase retrivel strenght, differ from those that maximise the gain of (memory) storage strenght’. In other words ‘Conditions that create challenges and slow the rate of apparent learning often optimize long-term retention and transfer’ (Bjork, E. L. & Bjork, R. A. 2011 in Kirschner et al 2025, p. 47). If your’e curious for more, have a look at our page on evidence-based design.
A temptation that comes from this desire to make learning visible, is to create a lot of (programmatic) assessments, especially with technology here to help us. In the dilemma between saving time reviewing assesments and keeping human nuance and empathy, perhaps the way forward is more this. To not get carried away by technology and create ever more assessments for automated review.
Rather, we must realise which assesments are truly valid and authentic, what is really necessary and through that create time for the teaching staff to be able to personally assess especially the really good knowledge students need for their futures.
At STUDIOBLENDED we call this the human resilience angle (of the teacher).
In its essence, ultimately, a progressive understanding is that assessment is perhaps less about the student, but all about evaluating your education. This is where it starts to be interesting, and brings us back to effective and resilient curriculum design. A thorough look at assessment, means actually a new look at your curriculum design.
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🎙 Keynote: Big ideas and modular curriculum design.
Prefer to read? Transcript
Listen on: Acast Spotify Apple
Release summer ‘24
Our curriculum design is centered on assessment, and includes both pragmatism for a MOOC, and idealism, in close collaboration with the client.
European funded program.
More information follows soon.
1 Formative assessment is designed to enhance a participant’s learning process. It typically involves qualitative feedback, that focuses on the details of content and performance.
2 Summative assessment seeks to monitor educational outcomes, and summarises the development of the learner at a particular moment. This type of assessment typically includes grading of a participants’ output or performance (and explicitly not the progress made) with the aim to summarize learning up to that point. Grading may be used for diagnostic assessment to identify any weaknesses and then build on that using formative assessment.
A rubric can be extremely useful for such programmatic assessment. At STUDIOBLENDED we are well versed with creating, designing and realising impactful rubrics for your assesment. Feel free to call us to learn more or tell us your challenge.
Cardozo, M.L., Wessels, K. and Van den Berg, B. (2025) The Art of Regenerative Educatorship. London: Routledge. Available: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003705321/art-regenerative-educatorship-mieke-lopes-cardozo-koen-wessels-bas-van-den-berg(Accessed: October 27, 2025)
Landymore, F. (2025). ‘Chat GPT has already polluted the internet so badly that it’s hobbling future AI development.’ Futurism, June 16 Availalbe: https://futurism.com/chatgpt-polluted-ruined-ai-development (Accessed: October 27, 2025)
Biesta, G. (2025) The future of education in the impulse society: Why schools and teachers matter. Prospects. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-025-09723-1 (Accessed: 27 October, 2025).
Kirschner, P.A., Hendrick, C. and Heal J. (2025). Instructional illusions. London: Hachette Learning:.
Mulder, R., Baik, C. and Ryan T. (2025) ‘Rethinking assessment in response to AI’. Melbourne: Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne.
Kosmyna N., Hauptmann, E., Tong Yuan, Y., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A.V., Braunstein, I and Maes, P. (2025) ‘Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task’. New York: Cornell University. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 (Accessed: October 27, 2025).
Risbo (2025) MicroLab (Gen)AI and assessment. Course for Erasmus University Teaching staff and associates.
Stabel, K. 2025. ‘Education in the Age of AI: A plea for Craftmanship. Blogpost by deputy director of Risbo.’ Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Taveras-Dalmau, V., Becken, S. and Westoby, R. (2025) ‘From paradigm blindness to paradigm shift? An integrative review and critical analysis of the regenerative paradigm.’ Ambio (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7#citeas(Accessed: October 27, 2025).
Big ideas
Paradigm shifts/decade strong
Simplicity and decluttering
Human resilience
Modular
Innovative and deep pedagogy
Assesment / evaluation
Time dimension
Evidence-based design
Financial health and resilience by (re)design
Multi- Inter- and transdisciplinary
Flexibilisation and personalisation
Blended
Curios? Feel free to contact our independent senior advisor directly:
tikvah@studioblended.com
Freire, Paulo 1970 (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
Resilient education that stands the test of time - by design.
AI is showing the vulnerabilities of assessment in particular, and requires us to reflect again about our learning objectives. ‘Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming higher education, revealing both opportunities and vulnerabilities in the way we assess student learning. Suddenly, the way we’ve always assessed student learning doesn’t feel quite so solid anymore’ (Risbo 2025).
It is not straightforward at all, and a huge challenge to course and degree coordinators (and all teaching staff involved), how to exactly change assesment in the presence of AI.
As the University of Sydney (2025 in Risbo MicroLab AI and assessment 2025) writes: ‘Some level of assessment redesign is required across almost every unit to both manage the risk of generative AI and provide students with opportunities to engage with it productively and responsibly. In a world where AI is inescapable, assessments should both assure learning in secure settings, and adapt to the reality of AI in other settings, as appropriate to each discipline.’
We likely need to revisit the constructive alignment in our course or degree, because AI changes our approach to the assessment. Or to put it differently, assesment is a good angle to start with revisiting our education, as AI most likely impacts that. As soon as we change something about our assessment - we must revisit the learning objectives too.
Our technical approach to curriculum design is based on ‘constructive alignment’. You achieve it with backward design, which has proved to be a robust technique for design. We go over and beyond mere learning activities, by partnering with you and crafting big ideas, understanding and knowledge statements in your knowledge domain, coupled with skills and capabilities. We strategize content for well into the coming decade. Source image: Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
But there is more, even with or without AI coming to the scene. Assesment is reinvisioned to be so much more than the classic excercise or test: ‘Guess what the teacher wants to hear’ (Stabel 2025). Stabel (2025) continues and writes: ‘We need to talk about how we can reorganize education around a conversation about development, growth, and craftsmanship. Hasn't it been our job—for a long time—to educate curious, critical, open-minded, and responsible people who make a difference in society?‘
This last question exactly is the paradigm shift and winds of change (or revival) we see in assesment today. It also leans towards the upcoming ‘regenerative education’ or ‘purpose-driven learning experiences’, which is all about systems change (see i.e. Cardozo, Berg, Wessels 2025). Even as, as Taveras-Dalmau et al. (2025) write ‘Regeneration holds great promise, but without reflexivity, it risks becoming an ideology that replicates the very paradigm blindness it seeks to overcome.‘ What then is the promise of this new curriculum approach?
Stabel (2025) writes: ‘If we truly want to make an impact [on traditional Higher Education], we must all move towards more development-oriented, programmatic assessment, where we gain a complete picture of the student. This also creates so much more room for craftsmanship, for human interaction (as opposed to AI).‘ And he continues: ‘Our true goal (is): educating people who can make an impact in the world.’
Meanwhile, there is so much out there on assesment, but what is the origin of it? Simply, evaluation. Making the learning visible. Or more precisely: getting evidence about behaviour change in your learners (after Tyler 1947).
Right after the identification of learning objectives, in constructive alignment, comes assessment. How are you going to make the learning visible, so that you can evaluate it?
There is an interesting instructional illusion here too (after Kirschner, Hendrick & Heal 2025, p. 45-50): the easy-win illusion - and the way to solve it [based on cognitive science] is: desirable difficulties. ‘One of education’s most seductive misconceptions is the belief that learning should be effortless.’ (...) And as educators we may strive to make learning as easy as possible, we like to have ‘student evaluation systems that reward quick performance over lasting learning, and educational technology that promises ‘painless’ learning over the real work of improving.’ But, ‘the reality is that true learning only happens when we expend mental effort during learning. Learning requires deep processing of what we are to learn. And this deep processing requires mental effort.’
‘The key idea’, write Kirschner, Hendrick & Heal (2025, p. 47) is that the conditions that most rapidly increase retrivel strenght, differ from those that maximise the gain of (memory) storage strenght’. In other words ‘Conditions that create challenges and slow the rate of apparent learning often optimize long-term retention and transfer’ (Bjork, E. L. & Bjork, R. A. 2011 in Kirschner et al 2025, p. 47). If your’e curious for more, have a look at our page on evidence-based design.
A temptation that comes from this desire to make learning visible, is to create a lot of (programmatic) assessments, especially with technology here to help us. In the dilemma between saving time reviewing assesments and keeping human nuance and empathy, perhaps the way forward is more this. To not get carried away by technology and create ever more assessments for automated review.
Rather, we must realise which assesments are truly valid and authentic, what is really necessary and through that create time for the teaching staff to be able to personally assess especially the really good knowledge students need for their futures.
At STUDIOBLENDED we call this the human resilience angle (of the teacher).
In its essence, ultimately, a progressive understanding is that assessment is perhaps less about the student, but all about evaluating your education. This is where it starts to be interesting, and brings us back to effective and resilient curriculum design. A thorough look at assessment, means actually a new look at your curriculum design.
Our Audio Podcast
🎙 Keynote: Big ideas and modular curriculum design.
Prefer to read? Transcript
Listen on: Acast Spotify Apple
Release summer ‘24
Key projects
StudioBlended is currently partnering with an institute for capacity building within a European University, to co-create an impactful MOOC for this client (2025-mrch 2026).Our curriculum design is centered on assessment, and includes both pragmatism for a MOOC, and idealism, in close collaboration with the client.
European funded program.
More information follows soon.
Further reading
There are two types of programmatic assessment:1 Formative assessment is designed to enhance a participant’s learning process. It typically involves qualitative feedback, that focuses on the details of content and performance.
2 Summative assessment seeks to monitor educational outcomes, and summarises the development of the learner at a particular moment. This type of assessment typically includes grading of a participants’ output or performance (and explicitly not the progress made) with the aim to summarize learning up to that point. Grading may be used for diagnostic assessment to identify any weaknesses and then build on that using formative assessment.
A rubric can be extremely useful for such programmatic assessment. At STUDIOBLENDED we are well versed with creating, designing and realising impactful rubrics for your assesment. Feel free to call us to learn more or tell us your challenge.
Related publications
Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M. A. Gernsbacher, R. W. Pew, L. M. Hough, & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (pp. 56–64). Worth Publishers.Cardozo, M.L., Wessels, K. and Van den Berg, B. (2025) The Art of Regenerative Educatorship. London: Routledge. Available: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003705321/art-regenerative-educatorship-mieke-lopes-cardozo-koen-wessels-bas-van-den-berg(Accessed: October 27, 2025)
Landymore, F. (2025). ‘Chat GPT has already polluted the internet so badly that it’s hobbling future AI development.’ Futurism, June 16 Availalbe: https://futurism.com/chatgpt-polluted-ruined-ai-development (Accessed: October 27, 2025)
Biesta, G. (2025) The future of education in the impulse society: Why schools and teachers matter. Prospects. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-025-09723-1 (Accessed: 27 October, 2025).
Kirschner, P.A., Hendrick, C. and Heal J. (2025). Instructional illusions. London: Hachette Learning:.
Mulder, R., Baik, C. and Ryan T. (2025) ‘Rethinking assessment in response to AI’. Melbourne: Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne.
Kosmyna N., Hauptmann, E., Tong Yuan, Y., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A.V., Braunstein, I and Maes, P. (2025) ‘Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task’. New York: Cornell University. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 (Accessed: October 27, 2025).
Risbo (2025) MicroLab (Gen)AI and assessment. Course for Erasmus University Teaching staff and associates.
Stabel, K. 2025. ‘Education in the Age of AI: A plea for Craftmanship. Blogpost by deputy director of Risbo.’ Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Taveras-Dalmau, V., Becken, S. and Westoby, R. (2025) ‘From paradigm blindness to paradigm shift? An integrative review and critical analysis of the regenerative paradigm.’ Ambio (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7#citeas(Accessed: October 27, 2025).
More design angles we use
Technical resilienceBig ideas
Paradigm shifts/decade strong
Simplicity and decluttering
Human resilience
Modular
Innovative and deep pedagogy
Assesment / evaluation
Time dimension
Evidence-based design
Financial health and resilience by (re)design
Multi- Inter- and transdisciplinary
Flexibilisation and personalisation
Blended
Curios? Feel free to contact our independent senior advisor directly:
tikvah@studioblended.com
References
Freire, Paulo 1974 (2013) Education for critical consciousness. London New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Freire, Paulo 1970 (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
Resilient education that stands the test of time - by design.
Prefer to have direct contact?
Feel free to contact us directly
Tikvah Breimer (MSc MAEd MSc)
Independent senior advisor, teacher trainer, director.
tikvah@studioblended.com
+31 6 42 47 29 69
STUDIOBLENDED Non Profit Foundation
Registration Chamber of Commerce
KvK-number 86242598 (Dutch)
VAT identification number
NL 86 39 07 29 5 B01
Bankaccount
NL40 INGB 0709 6156 04
SWIFT/BIC: INGBNL2A
StudioBlended Foundation
Feel free to contact us directly
Tikvah Breimer (MSc MAEd MSc)
Independent senior advisor, teacher trainer, director.
tikvah@studioblended.com
+31 6 42 47 29 69
RECEIVE A CALL TO DISCOVER MORE
STUDIOBLENDED Non Profit Foundation
Registration Chamber of Commerce
KvK-number 86242598 (Dutch)
VAT identification number
NL 86 39 07 29 5 B01
Bankaccount
NL40 INGB 0709 6156 04
SWIFT/BIC: INGBNL2A
StudioBlended Foundation
