Capturing Maker Moments: Designing Embedded Assessments for Maker Education

While there are many benefits of making and makerspaces, one of the greatest challenges of implementing making in K–12 schools is the question of how to assess collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and iterative making practices and outcomes. For the past two years, MakerEd and the Playful Journey Lab has been collaborating to create the Beyond Rubrics Toolkit, a remixable collection of tools to capture the evidence of the making process developed by the MIT Playful Journey Lab & MakerEd. The first version of the toolkit is now available at www.makered.org/beyondrubrics.This workshop will take a deep dive into the first steps of the embedded assessment design process, and focus on what constructs educators (and other stakeholders in the learning community) value, and what that construct will look like in the context of their makerspace or classroom. While less common in general making, it is important to have a clear articulation of these learning goals to ensure the construct validity of the assessment as well as informing instruction and facilitation by the educator (Wilson & Sloane, 2000). The clearer understanding of a skill or construct, developed during the workshop, will help educators make decisions on how best to support individual students to make progress towards becoming better problem solvers, troubleshooters, and collaborators.