D659: Assessing and Monitoring Student Learning

Assessing and Monitoring Student Learning builds the assessment literacy every teacher-candidate needs — the full toolkit from formative checks to standardized data, and how to turn that data into better instruction.

What D659 covers

The course is a targeted course crafted for candidates who aim to enhance their skills in evaluating student progress and educational outcomes. It provides an in-depth exploration of various assessment techniques, including formative and summative assessments, standardized tests, benchmark assessments, progress monitoring, and alternative assessment strategies.

Participants learn how to design effective assessment tools, interpret data to inform instruction, and provide meaningful feedback to students, including a foundation of data analysis that supports educators' need to understand and present data to stakeholders. Candidates also explore online and digital assessment tools.

The D659 performance assessment

Expect a performance assessment requiring you to design an assessment plan for a given lesson or unit, aligning assessment types to learning objectives and describing how the resulting data would inform instruction.

Key topics in D659

• Formative vs. summative assessment
• Standardized and benchmark assessments
• Interpreting data to inform instruction
• Providing meaningful, timely feedback

Writing tips for D659

Follow the task instructions and rubric line by line

WGU performance assessments for D659 are graded against a fixed rubric — every rubric line has to be visibly addressed, usually with a labeled heading that mirrors the rubric language. Skipping a rubric point because it seems minor is the single most common reason a competent submission comes back "Not Yet Competent" for revision.

Ground every claim in a real or realistic classroom scenario

Education courses like D659 typically ask you to apply theory to a specific grade level, subject, or student population rather than write about teaching in the abstract. Evaluators are checking whether your reasoning fits a concrete classroom situation — vague, generic statements about "good teaching" usually lose rubric points for lacking that specificity.

Because WGU is self-paced, don't let "no deadline pressure" become no submission

There's no weekly due date forcing progress, which means procrastination costs more at WGU than at a traditional term-based school — a stalled task can quietly eat weeks of a term. Treat your own target date for each D659 assessment as a real deadline.

Why students seek help with D659

Candidates sometimes select an assessment type (say, a summative test) without justifying why it's the right fit for the specific learning objective — the rubric typically wants that alignment explicitly argued, not assumed.

How GradeEssays helps with D659

Share your lesson/unit objectives and rubric, and your writer will build an assessment plan with the assessment-type-to-objective alignment clearly justified.

Prerequisites and program context

D659 has no listed additional prerequisites and is part of the shared undergraduate teacher-education core. This course is shared across WGU's undergraduate secondary-licensure teaching degrees:

• Bachelor of Science, Mathematics Education (Secondary)
• Bachelor of Science, Science Education (Secondary Biological Science)
• Bachelor of Science, Science Education (Secondary Chemistry)
• Bachelor of Science, Science Education (Secondary Earth Science)
• Bachelor of Science, Science Education (Secondary Physics)

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