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Purpose: When using embedded, student-centered assessment tools for maker education, understanding the characteristics of a body of evidence can help teachers guide the assessment process. This study aims to examine assessment artifacts from a makerspace program and present a set of qualities that emerged, which researchers and maker educators can use to evaluate the quality of evidence before interpreting it and making claims about student learning. Design/methodology/approach: This study used the interpretive analysis approach to identify salient qualities in a body of evidence of maker learning. Data sources included student assessment artifacts, researchers' analytic memos, notes on the coding and analysis process, background stories and field observations. Findings: The study found that the assessment artifacts generated by students aligned with the maker-related target skills. A set of qualities was produced that can be used to describe the strength of a body of evidence and help determine whether it is appropriate to be used in the meaning making phase. Practical implications: The qualities identified in this study can be directly incorporated into the embedded assessment toolkit to provide feedback on the strength of evidence for learning in makerspaces. Originality/value: Assessment methods for maker education are nascent, and ways to describe the quality of a student-generated body of evidence have not yet been established. This study applies existing knowledge of embedded assessment and reflective practice toward the creation of a new way of assessing skills that are difficult to measure.

Purpose: As maker-centered learning grows rapidly in school environments, there is an urgent need for new forms of assessment. The purpose of this paper is to report on the development and implementation of tools to support embedded assessment of maker competencies within school-based maker programs and describes alternative assessment approaches to rubrics and portfolios. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a design-based research (DBR) method, with researchers collaborating with US middle school teachers to iteratively design a set of tools that support implementation of embedded assessment. Based on teacher and student interviews, classroom observations, journal notes and post-implementation interviews, the authors report on the final phase of DBR, highlighting how teachers can implement embedded assessment in maker classrooms as well as the challenges that teachers face with assessment. Findings: This study showed that embedded assessment can be implemented in a variety of ways, and that flexible and adaptable assessment tools can play a crucial role in supporting teachers in this process. Additionally, though teachers expressed a strong desire for student involvement in the assessment process, we observed minimal student agency during implementation. Further study is needed to investigate how establishing classroom culture and norms around assessment may enable students to fully participate in assessment processes. Originality/value: Due to the dynamic and collaborative nature of maker-centered learning, teachers may find it difficult to provide on-the-fly feedback. By employing an embedded assessment approach, this study explored a new form of assessment that is flexible and adaptable, allowing teachers to formally plan ahead while also adjusting in the moment.