Assessment Domain - Model Diagrams

This section contains reference information for the Assessment domain model and subdomains.

Assessment Model UML Diagram

Assessment Domain (click to enlarge)

Learning Standard Subdomain

Many states have learning standards that drive the curriculum and the assessments. The Common Core State Standards Initiative (www.corestandards.org) is a national initiative for standards in this area. The assessment model stores Common Core or locally defined standards in the LearningStandard and related entities.

The model supports a hierarchical taxonomy of learning skills using multiple levels of LearningStandard, which may correspond to levels of subjects, domains, or strands; the LearningStandardScope element captures the appropriate scope of these levels whereas the SuccessCriteria element captures the criterion that teacher and students use to check for attainment of the objective.

The LearningStandard entity may also be hierarchically organized to support the use case that adopters of the Common Core often decompose a standard into lower level standards in their curriculum. The HasAssociatedPrerequisite association captures prerequisites for a learning standard as would be specified in a learning map.

The LearningStandardEquivalenceAssociation allows for standards of varying scopes and sources, defined using the LearningStandardScope and Namespace elements respectively, to have a defined equivalence and strength of equivalence.

Assessment, Learning Standards Model UML Diagram

Assessment - Standards Subdomain (click to enlarge)

Assessment Metadata Subdomain

Assessment metadata is information describing the assessment instrument itself. This includes details about the overall Assessment, defined ObjectiveAssessments, and individual AssessmentItems.

Score and performance level (or cut score) metadata can be defined in the Assessment and ObjectiveAssessment entities. AssessmentItem details include questions including associated learning standards, the item text, all possible responses, and the correct response.

Assessments can be associated with a particular section, program, or remain stand-alone. For example, if an Assessment is defined to assess Common Core Standards, then the association shall be with Section. If the Assessment is defined to assess the Developmental Domains by an Early Learning program, then the association shall be with Program. State assessments are an example of stand-alone assessments that do not tie to a particular section or program.

Assessment, Assessment Metadata Model UML Diagram

Assessment - Assessment Metadata Subdomain (click to enlarge)

Student Assessment Subdomain

The Assessment entity represents a specific administration of an assessment and contains the minimum amount of metadata required for an assessment.

• If the Assessment entity is associated with one or more sections, an association is made to the section(s).
• The ObjectiveAssessment entity is the optional identification of portions of the assessment that test specific learning objectives. If required, there can be multiple levels of hierarchical ObjectiveAssessment entities.
• The AssessmentItem entity supports the optional identification of the individual questions or items on a test to be scored. Typically, the identification of AssessmentItem entities is done in conjunction with their mapping to LearningStandard entities.
• If the assessment references the Common Core or other state standards for LearningStandard entities, then the assessment metadata would reference the preloaded standards. If the assessment references its own set of LearningStandard entities, then that data would be loaded as assessment metadata. An ObjectiveAssessment entity may test one or more LearningStandard entities.

The student's assessment results follow a similar structure to the assessment metadata.

• The StudentAssessment entity holds the overall assessment score and other information about a specific student's results for a specific assessment.
• The StudentObjectiveAssessment common type included in the StudentAssessment entity optionally holds the student's score for individually scored results for a specific learning objective. If the assessment metadata includes objective assessments, then there would be corresponding StudentObjectiveAssessment entities for each student.
• The StudentAssessmentItem common type included in the StudentAssessment entity optionally holds the student's score for individual AssessmentItem entities. If the assessment metadata includes AssessmentItem, then there would be corresponding StudentAssessmentItem entities for each student.

Assessment, Student Assessment Model UML Diagram

Assessment - Student Assessment Subdomain (click to enlarge)