What could cause an assessment cycle to be short-circuited? Are there any epicycles?
At any point in an assessment cycle, there may be a need to modify a previous step before completing the cycle. For example, if you determine that a learning goal is flawed, you may not want to measure progress toward that goal. Return to the goal-setting stage and fix that before proceeding. Similarly, many have found that the process of more precisely defining learning goals in itself suggests changes in curriculum. For example, simply setting the explicit goal that students should be able to explain a concept in mathematics to a non-mathematician raises the question of where this skill is actually taught in the curriculum and where students get a chance to practice it. In situations like the one above, one has smaller cycles — epicycles — inside the larger assessment cycle. These epicycles may not need to be repeated in future trips through the assessment cycle.
