D. Decide on Appropriate Assessment Measures

After the standards and learning outcomes have been identified, your next step is to decide how students' mastery or understanding will be assessed. For a short-term activity, this may consist of observation, a quiz, or successful completion of a task. For long-term activities, assessment should be on-going and may include measures such as observations, quizzes, self-assessments, and performance tasks.

Although assessment options will be discussed in more detail in Lesson 5: Evaluation, it is important to emphasize that they need to be addressed in all phases -- beginning in the Decide phase. By examining how the outcomes will be assessed in the beginning of a project, you can ensure that the learning outcomes are appropriate and measurable. In addition, it is important to provide students with a list of evaluation criteria and standards for an activity at its onset. In that way, students know what is expected of them.