Head of Assessment

Job Details

Department

Education

Reporting Manager

Director of Education

Job Location

HQ, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Job Purpose

The Head of Assessment leads the composition and coordination of assessment of student learning outcomes and assists in the evaluation of academic programs across all Alef Education portfolios. The role works directly with data teams to integrate assessment activities and results with data and education initiatives and objectives, supporting quality and learning across all instructional programs.

Key Responsibilities

Assessment Strategy – Align education content with customer assessment tools to enable long term partnerships & achievement of business goals.

• Lead design and administration of a comprehensive, continual and multi-dimensional assessment program of student learning outcomes and evaluation of Alef academic programs.

• Collaborate with education and data teams to integrate and align assessment and evaluation efforts in a consistent manner across the organization.

• Advise teams and projects on selection of assessment/item types (CAT, CBT, Performance Tasks), item formats, and test designs that are used for diagnostic, progress monitoring, evaluation.

• Support the organization’s ability to improve learning outcomes by collecting, organizing, and analyzing assessment data for dissemination across key stakeholders.

• Support development and implementation of assessment strategies and plans, identifying appropriate measures and methods to be used for assessment of student learning outcomes.

• In coordination with education content leaders, develop and support implementation of assessment programs for all general K-12 education content programs.

• Build relationships within the global education community to capitalize on and pioneer Alef’s capabilities to continuously develop and improve predictive assessment of student learning outcomes.

Assessment Data & Analysis – Champions student learning needs through assessment analysis and reporting to enable identification of and closure of learning gaps

• Lead the reporting of assessment activities and the evaluation of program learning through assessment.

• Analyze and communicate the results of ongoing assessments conducted throughout school programs.

• Lead assessment reporting strategies and cycles to help identify key learner needs, problems, and opportunities.

• Articulate and promote Alef Education K-12 assessment models, frameworks and approaches that enable predictive assessment results in digital based learning platforms.

• Work closely with the Data Science team to link assessment to adaptive testing, item-response-theory, and the psychometric foundations of the Alef recommendations engine / knowledge graph / intelligent tutoring.

• Advise Education and Data Science on the definition of metadata describing areas of educational measurement.

• Advise on the development of models of learning, and the measures that have predictive value.

Coaching & Development of Internal Teams – Coach and lead training and support to enhance the company’s ability to create effective assessments that predictably drive learning improvement.

• Work closely with various universities and education-based institutes regarding digital assessment research and initiatives to identify and conceptualize new processes that may be used by internal teams.

• Lead training and coaching of new assessment strategies to enable implementation of techniques throughout lesson content.

• Work both within and across teams to establish assessment development and testing processes, with cycles of item pool revision and maintenance.

• Champion learning and experimentation across the organization, maintaining a focus on reliable assessment results.

• Facilitate, challenge and evolve digital assessment methodology and models, features, and specifications to enable high quality assessment for our clients and their students

Education, Experience and Required Skills

Educational Qualification

• Master’s Degree in relevant field (Psychometrics, Psychology, Statistics, etc)

• PhD in a relevant field a strong advantage

Experience

• Minimum 3 years education assessment (item writing) in a specific K-12 field as an expert practitioner, test writer or other position

• Minimum 2 years’ experience working in a digital assessment production environment serving in a leadership position (for educational testing or student evaluation)

Psychometric Practice

• Demonstrated knowledge and application of assessment design theories, best practices for K-12.

• Competent in applied psychometric techniques-including classical test theory, item response theory, test equating, and linking.

• Demonstrated ability to facilitate panels, standard setting meetings and trainings of item developers.

• Demonstrated fluency in design practice, ranging from computer adaptive testing (CAT), Performance-based tests and CBT, to Bayesian inference networks and multidimensional IRT.

• Expertise with data analysis supporting assessment (e.g, data forensics) – an advantage.

• Competence in statistical and visualization tools: R, Stata or SPSS; IRT Pro, Tableau competence an advantage

• Mastering Trends in Assessment

• Self-learner, who is motivated to develop up-to-date knowledge and skills of trends in assessment, both local and international, and reads international assessment documentation (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS).

• Member affiliation with professional associations for assessment, evaluation and testing

Communication and Collaboration Skills

• Strong communication skills (oral, written, and business) necessary to function effectively with clients and internal teams.

• Ability to communicate technical language to experts and non-experts.

• Candidates selected for the interview will prepare writing samples / job talk.

• Ability to plan, budget and monitor assessment initiatives.

• Ability to lead change within diverse multicultural teams with varying understandings and competence with assessment.

• Problem solving abilities to drive projects to completion.

• Relationship Builder: ability to quickly establish credibility, influence and trust with other Education Division members

• Creative ability to assess with elegance for accessibility (ELL, SEN).

• Familiarity with project management tools

• English proficiency and must; Arabic proficiency very desirable

Essential Skills

• Problem solving; ability to drive toward project completion, overcoming obstacles, bottlenecks and other risks as required.

• Relationship Builder: ability to quickly establish credibility, influence and trust with other team members in order to better drive results.

• Creative Design: ability to see the big picture of the design process and influence continuous creativity details without losing focus on schedule and process efficiencies.

• Deadline oriented; ability to articulate priorities and revise plans to meet tight deadlines.

• Results oriented; ability to evaluate data, identify risks and opportunities and adjust work to refine and achieve targeted results.

• Project management: able to clearly articulate scope, schedule, budget and resource needs, managing barriers and risk to achieve delivery