STUDIOBLENDED

ASSESSMENT (evaluation) 

—
^{‘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

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, comes assessment. How are you going to make the learning visible, so that you can evaluate it?

We scope a bespoke approach, with truly cutting edge relevant ways to assess your learners, along the learning journey. Think of an AI discussant as a way to allow the learner to test their comprehension of concepts in a discussion. Think of unfacilitated peer assessment built into the learning management system. Or envsion assessments we can design for you for face to face education.

There are two types of 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.

AI has opened new horizons for assesment, and it’s important to understand what it can, and cannot be used for. We believe AI is best used to asses basic knowledge. In other words: things, or concepts, you either know - or you don’t. For really good knowledge, the understanding and transfer we hope to see in our students - we still need the in person assesments. Let’s illustrate the difference.

Gert Biesta (2025) uses the historical example of Rosa Parks who entered a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1953, to illustrate a crucial educational point. The bus had signs at the entry indicating "White forward, colored rear". Even so, Rosa Parks, takes a seat in the front of the bus. Can she not read? Gert Biesta writes (2025):
‘Now, if your educational mind is completely colonised by (...) ‘basic skills’, then you might say, ‘Here we have a big problem because there is a very clear message, but Rosa Parks is not decoding the message, so she needs to go back to school—this is a case of educational failure’.
Biesta emphasizes that Rosa Parks was "perfectly able to read the message". Her action was not due to a lack of cognitive skill, but rather an act of judgment and resistance. She made up her own mind and decided to say "no" to a societal norm she found unacceptable, despite knowing the potential consequences. That, is what distinguishes knowledge, from really good knowledge. And a machine cannot assess this.

In the dilemma between saving time reviewing assesments and keeping human nuance and empathy, perhaps the way forward is more this. Do 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 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). Curios? Feel free to contact us directly.



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.

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Key projects

We are currently actively experimenting and innovating with a discussant AI, as a way for double dialogue with the knowledge domain of an institute for capacity development in a European University. For this experiment, we exchange and co-create with a spectrum of experts who are enthusiastic about innovation in education. To us, throughout, the pedagogy is leading. We are developing into Coursera. To this end it is important to make seperate spaces which we specialise with the academic resources of the client, to avoid that AI starts to invent things. A really good rubric is key for the GenAI to be able to assess the learner, and good prompts as examples for the learner.

Related publications

Gert Biesta 2025. The Future of Education in the impulse society: why schools matter. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-025-09723-1 

Frank Landymore, 2025. Chat GPT has already polluted the internet so badly that it’s hobbling future AI development. Futurism. https://futurism.com/chatgpt-polluted-ruined-ai-development 

Nataliya Kosmyna et al. 2025. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. Cornell university https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

More design angles we use

Technical resilience
Human resilience
Modular
Time dimension
Evidence-based design
Financial health and resilience by (re)design
Innovative and deep pedagogy
Assesment / evaluation
Multi- Inter- and transdisciplinary
Blended
Bichronous
MOOC
Designed to be green (and technological simplicity)
Nature and aspirations
Flexibilisation and personalisation
Simplicity and decluttering



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. 

We are here especially for you as unique professional, to come alongside you and partner with you, as you work on a (architecture / urban / development / policy / land / water / climate) curriculum, so that you can offer effective and resilient education in its simplest form.