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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Curriculum Assessor

💰 $ - $

EducationCurriculum DevelopmentAssessmentInstructional Design

🎯 Role Definition

A Curriculum Assessor is a specialist responsible for evaluating, validating and improving educational programs, courses, and learning resources to ensure alignment with institutional goals, regulatory standards, and measurable learning outcomes. This role combines pedagogical expertise, assessment design, data-driven evaluation, and stakeholder collaboration to recommend improvements that enhance learner achievement and program quality. The Curriculum Assessor works across departments with faculty, instructional designers, accreditation teams and external partners to operationalize high-quality curriculum standards and scalable assessment strategies.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Curriculum Coordinator or Curriculum Developer
  • Instructional Designer or Learning Designer
  • Classroom Teacher / Subject Matter Expert with assessment responsibilities

Advancement To:

  • Senior Curriculum Assessor / Lead Curriculum Analyst
  • Director of Curriculum & Assessment
  • Head of Academic Quality or Accreditation

Lateral Moves:

  • Instructional Design Manager
  • Learning Analytics Specialist
  • Quality Assurance Manager (Education)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Conduct comprehensive curriculum reviews across one or more academic programs, analyzing course sequencing, learning objectives, assessment strategies and instructional materials to determine alignment with institutional goals and accreditation standards.
  • Design and lead systematic program-level assessment cycles, including the development of measurable learning outcomes, assessment plans, timelines, and documentation for continuous improvement processes.
  • Create, validate and maintain high-quality assessment instruments — including rubrics, item banks, performance tasks and standardized tests — ensuring reliability, validity and fairness for diverse learner populations.
  • Perform quantitative and qualitative analyses of assessment data (e.g., item analysis, score distributions, rubric scoring reliability, thematic coding of qualitative feedback) and translate findings into evidence-based recommendations for curriculum revision.
  • Facilitate stakeholder workshops and faculty development sessions to train instructors on assessment literacy, constructive alignment, learning outcome writing and the effective use of assessment tools and data in course improvement.
  • Map curriculum content and assessments to national/state standards, professional competency frameworks and employer skills frameworks to ensure external alignment and graduate readiness.
  • Lead pilot implementations of revised curriculum elements and assessment approaches, monitoring fidelity, collecting formative data and iterating instruments and resources before scale-up.
  • Manage accreditation and regulatory reporting related to curriculum and assessment, producing clear narratives, supporting evidence and compliance documentation for internal and external evaluators.
  • Evaluate the pedagogical effectiveness of instructional materials and technology (e.g., LMS course shells, multimedia resources, adaptive learning platforms), supplying actionable recommendations to designers and faculty for enhancement.
  • Collaborate with learning analytics teams to define key performance indicators (KPIs), develop dashboards and interpret longitudinal trends related to retention, attainment and skill mastery.
  • Conduct gap analyses to identify misalignment between stated learning outcomes, instructional activities and assessment methods, then design targeted corrective actions and monitoring plans.
  • Oversee the creation and maintenance of program-level curriculum documentation repositories, taxonomies and version control processes to support institutional memory and transparency.
  • Provide expert review of assessment security and academic integrity practices, recommending policy changes and technical controls for high-stakes and online assessments.
  • Coordinate cross-functional project plans with academic leaders, IT, instructional designers and external partners to deliver curriculum improvements on time and within scope.
  • Appraise the accessibility and inclusivity of curriculum and assessments, ensuring alignment with universal design for learning (UDL) principles and accommodations for diverse learners.
  • Synthesize literature reviews, best-practice research and benchmarking studies to inform curriculum decisions, disseminating findings in actionable briefs and presentations.
  • Support the development of competency frameworks and proficiency scales and integrate them into course-level assessments to enable competency-based education pathways.
  • Develop sampling strategies and scoring protocols for performance-based and authentic assessments, training and supervising scorers to maintain inter-rater reliability.
  • Produce executive-level reports and presentations summarizing assessment outcomes, impact of curriculum changes, risks and proposed next steps for academic committees and senior leadership.
  • Provide continuous consultation to program leads on remediation strategies, curriculum pathways and targeted interventions for underperforming cohorts based on assessment evidence.
  • Manage vendor relationships and procure assessment-related services or content where external expertise or item banks are required, ensuring contractual alignment with institutional standards.
  • Champion quality assurance initiatives that embed assessment-informed decision making into program review cycles and institutional planning processes.
  • Monitor and evaluate the impact of micro-courses, bootcamps and non-credit offerings to ensure transferability of learning and alignment with credentialing frameworks.
  • Lead or contribute to accreditation self-studies, ensuring curriculum evidence, assessment artifacts and learning outcome data are robust, well-documented and easily navigable by reviewers.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to answer urgent program-level questions and decision-support needs.
  • Contribute to the organization's curriculum and assessment strategy, helping to set priorities, timelines and resource allocations for continuous improvement.
  • Collaborate with business units and academic departments to translate educational goals into practical evaluation frameworks and engineering requirements for learning platforms.
  • Participate in project planning, agile ceremonies and cross-functional meetings to align assessment roadmaps with institutional technology and operational capacity.
  • Provide mentorship and oversight to junior assessors, assessment coordinators and external scorers, contributing to capacity building and standardization of assessment practices.
  • Serve as a subject-matter reviewer for course validation panels, new program proposals and external partnership agreements.
  • Assist with budget planning related to assessment initiatives, including expenditure forecasting for assessment tools, scorer honoraria and professional development.
  • Represent the institution at conferences, working groups and accreditation meetings to maintain currency with sector trends and regulatory expectations.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Curriculum mapping and constructive alignment: ability to map learning objectives to course activities, assessments and program outcomes.
  • Assessment design and validation: expertise creating valid and reliable assessment instruments, rubrics, item-writing and piloting protocols.
  • Quantitative analysis: proficiency with statistical concepts relevant to education (item analysis, classical test theory, basic IRT concepts, significance testing).
  • Qualitative analysis: skills in thematic coding, focus group synthesis and reporting of narrative evidence for curriculum decisions.
  • Learning analytics and KPI design: experience defining, extracting and interpreting LMS and student information system data to inform curriculum changes.
  • Psychometrics fundamentals: working knowledge of reliability, validity, scaling and score interpretation for both formative and summative assessments.
  • Rubric development and scoring calibration: creating clear performance descriptors and running inter-rater reliability exercises.
  • Familiarity with LMS and assessment platforms: experience with Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace or similar systems and online proctoring tools.
  • Data visualization and reporting: ability to create clear charts, dashboards and executive summaries using tools such as Tableau, Power BI or advanced Excel.
  • Accessibility and UDL implementation: knowledge of inclusive design practices, accommodations and accessibility testing for curricular materials.
  • Project management: planning, timeline management and stakeholder coordination for multi-phase curriculum initiatives.
  • Documentation and compliance: competency in producing accreditation artifacts, technical specifications and policy documents.
  • Basic programming or scripting (preferred): comfort with R, Python, SQL or similar for data extraction and analysis (advantageous).

Soft Skills

  • Strong stakeholder management: experience building trust and influencing faculty, academic leaders and external partners.
  • Clear written and verbal communication: ability to synthesize complex assessment results into actionable, audience-appropriate recommendations.
  • Critical thinking and problem solving: capacity to interpret mixed-methods data and propose prioritized improvement actions.
  • Facilitation and training: skilled at leading workshops, calibration sessions and faculty development events.
  • Attention to detail and quality orientation: thoroughness in documentation, data handling and assessment integrity.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: works effectively in cross-functional teams and supports distributed program owners.
  • Time management and multitasking: able to manage concurrent review cycles and competing deadlines.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: keeps abreast of evolving pedagogy, standards and assessment technologies.
  • Ethical judgment and confidentiality: handles student data and assessment outcomes with integrity and discretion.
  • Change management: experience supporting adoption of new assessment practices and helping stakeholders navigate transitions.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Educational Measurement, Assessment, Psychology, Instructional Design or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree or higher in Educational Measurement & Evaluation, Curriculum & Instruction, Learning Sciences, Psychometrics, or a closely related discipline.
  • Relevant certifications in assessment, instructional design, or learning analytics (e.g., CED, AEA, ISTE, or vendor certifications) are advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Curriculum & Instruction
  • Educational Measurement / Psychometrics
  • Instructional Design / Learning Design
  • Educational Leadership / Policy
  • Learning Analytics / Educational Data Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of relevant professional experience in curriculum assessment, instructional design, educational measurement or program evaluation.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of progressive experience leading curriculum reviews, assessment development or accreditation activities in higher education, K-12, vocational, or corporate learning environments.
  • Demonstrated experience managing cross-functional projects, producing accreditation documentation and presenting findings to senior leadership or external reviewers.
  • Track record of designing valid and reliable assessment instruments and using learning analytics to drive curriculum decisions.
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