Assessment Blueprint Template (Table of Specifications)

Assessment Blueprint: [Assessment title]

Assessment blueprint (table of specifications) template for an exam, test or set of course assessments. It maps each learning objective against the six cognitive process levels of the revised Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), then turns the agreed marks into an item map, a timing plan, a review checklist and a post-test item analysis. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

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Revision history

Contents

1. Purpose and decisions
2. Learning objectives and weights
3. Table of specifications
4. Item map
5. Process
6. Review checklist
7. Post-assessment item analysis
8. Glossary and references
9. Standard and licence note

1. Purpose and decisions

2. Learning objectives and weights

3. Table of specifications

The six levels are the cognitive process dimension of the revised taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Create. The revised taxonomy also has a knowledge dimension (factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge); add it as a column in section 4 if your team classifies items by both dimensions.

Example reading of the matrix: 14 marks (23.3%) test remembering and understanding, 18 marks (30.0%) test application, and 28 marks (46.7%) test analysing, evaluating and creating. Agree the target profile with your team before writing items, and record why it suits the purpose in section 1.

4. Item map

Section totals in the Example: Section A has 14 marks (14 minutes), Section B has 30 marks (40 minutes) and Section C has 16 marks (26 minutes). With 10 minutes of reading time, the paper fits the 90-minute slot.

5. Process

The diagram shows the cycle from objectives to the next blueprint. Item analysis results feed the item bank, so each new form starts from items with known behaviour.

6. Review checklist

7. Post-assessment item analysis

For each item, compute the facility (difficulty) index as the mean mark divided by the maximum mark, and a discrimination figure such as the correlation between the item score and the rest of the test.

Example: Q19 had a mean of 4.6 out of 8, so $p = 4.6 / 8 = 0.575$.

Summarise what the results say about teaching as well as about the items: objectives with low facility across several items may need reteaching in the next unit.

8. Glossary and references

References:

• Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R. (eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman (now Pearson).
• AERA, APA and NCME (2014). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Cited for background on content-related validity evidence; not reproduced. Official text: AERA, APA and NCME, purchase or licensed access: https://www.testingstandards.net/purchasing-information.html (a revision was under way as of October 2026; check the site for the current edition).

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with the cognitive process dimension of the revised Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), cited by name, and with common practice for tables of specifications in classroom assessment. No text from the book or from the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is reproduced. This template is original text written for this collection; example objectives, marks and statistics are illustrative. Check the current edition of any cited publication before relying on it. Template licence: MIT.