WGU D093: Assessing Impact on Student Learning

What D093 Is Really About

WGU D093, Assessing Impact on Student Learning, sits inside the School of Education and is one of the more hands-on courses in your teacher-preparation sequence. Instead of a multiple-choice test, it asks you to act like the reflective teacher you are training to become: you plan how you will measure learning, you gather evidence from real students, and you use that evidence to judge whether your instruction actually moved the needle. In short, it is a course about closing the loop between teaching and learning.

Direct answer: To pass D093, treat it as a data-and-reflection project rather than an exam. Build a tightly aligned assessment plan, collect clear pre- and post-instruction evidence from your students, and then analyze that evidence honestly against the task rubric. Follow each prompt line by line, cite the data you gathered, and you will give an evaluator everything they need to score your work against the standard.

Most students reach D093 while they are placed in a classroom for clinical or demonstration teaching, so the work is grounded in a specific group of learners, a specific subject, and a specific set of learning objectives. That is what makes the course feel real, and also what makes it different from the reading-heavy courses that came before it. You are not summarizing a textbook; you are documenting your own decisions about a lesson or unit and defending them with evidence.

What the Performance Tasks Ask You to Do

D093 is assessed through written performance tasks that you submit to evaluators, often broken into a sequence of connected pieces built around one instructional cycle. While the exact prompts are refreshed periodically, the skill areas are consistent. Expect to work through some combination of the following:

• Learning objectives and standards alignment: stating measurable objectives tied to state or national standards for your subject and grade band.
• Assessment planning: designing both formative checks and a summative assessment, and explaining why each item or task actually measures the objective.
• Pre-assessment and baseline data: administering an assessment before instruction and organizing the results so patterns are visible.
• Data analysis: comparing pre- and post-instruction results, identifying which students grew, and describing proficiency levels honestly.
• Instructional adjustments: recommending specific next steps for the whole class, small groups, and individual learners based on what the data show.
• Reflection: evaluating the impact of your teaching and what you would do differently.

Some submissions also involve short video evidence of teaching or classroom practice, depending on your program version. The through-line across all of it is validity: your evaluator wants to see that your assessments measure what you claim, and that your conclusions follow from your data.

How Hard It Is, and How Long to Plan For

D093 is usually described by students as moderate: not conceptually difficult, but detail-heavy and easy to under-plan. The challenge is rarely the ideas. It is the discipline of keeping objectives, assessment items, data tables, and conclusions perfectly aligned so an evaluator can trace your logic without guessing.

Many students report finishing in a few focused weeks, especially when they are already teaching a unit they can build the tasks around. Others take longer because they have to wait on a real classroom cycle, or because an early submission returns for revision on alignment or clarity. Both outcomes are normal. Revisions in a performance-assessment course are feedback, not failure, so budget time for at least one round rather than assuming a single pass.

A Study and Work Plan That Fits Real Life

Because D093 is a project, your "studying" is really structured production. These tactics keep it moving:

• Start from the rubric, not the readings. Open the task rubric and turn every "aspect" into a checklist item. Write your response to satisfy each row explicitly. This is the single highest-value move in any WGU performance task.
• Use retrieval on the vocabulary. You will lean on terms like formative, summative, validity, reliability, proficiency, and standards alignment. Quiz yourself on them from memory until you can define each in a sentence, because your writing needs to use them precisely.
• Draft the assessment before the instruction. Design your pre-assessment and summative measure first so they mirror each other. When they share the same objectives, your data analysis almost writes itself.
• Build your data table early and populate it as you go. A clean table of students by objective, with pre and post results, prevents the scramble that catches people at the end.
• Space the work across a teaching cycle. Plan one week, teach and collect the next, analyze the next. Trying to compress a full instructional loop into a weekend is where quality slips.
• Practice the analysis out loud. Before writing, explain to yourself what the numbers mean: who grew, who stalled, and what you would change. If you can say it clearly, you can write it clearly.

If your program pairs D093 with related education coursework, the habits transfer well. The assessment-design thinking overlaps heavily with D184 Standards-Based Assessment, and the clear-communication skills you built in D268 Introduction to Communication pay off directly when you write up your findings for an evaluator.

Mistakes That Cost Students Time

A few predictable missteps send D093 submissions back for revision:

• Misaligned assessments. Objectives say one thing, but the test items measure something adjacent. Evaluators catch this quickly, so map every item to an objective.
• Data without interpretation. Pasting scores is not analysis. You must explain what the results mean for instruction, group by group and student by student where asked.
• Vague adjustments. "I would reteach the concept" is too thin. Name the strategy, the group, and how you would measure whether it worked.
• Skipping parts of the prompt. Multi-part tasks have sub-questions buried in the wording. Answer all of them, in order.
• Generic reflection. Tie your reflection to your actual data and your actual students, not to teaching in the abstract.
• Fabricated or inconsistent numbers. Your pre-data, post-data, and narrative must agree. Contradictions are an instant revision.

Your D093 Readiness Checklist

Before you submit, confirm you can honestly say yes to each of these:

• Can you state each learning objective in measurable terms tied to a specific standard?
• Can you show that every assessment item or task maps to one of your objectives?
• Can you present pre-assessment data in a clear, organized format?
• Can you compare pre- and post-instruction results and describe the change accurately?
• Can you identify which students reached proficiency and which did not?
• Can you recommend specific adjustments for the whole class, small groups, and individuals?
• Can you justify each conclusion with evidence from your own data?
• Can you reflect on your instructional impact and name what you would change?
• Have you checked your response against every row of the task rubric?

D093 FAQ

Is D093 an OA or a PA?

D093 is assessed through performance tasks, not a proctored objective exam. You submit written work built around a real instructional cycle, and an evaluator scores it against a rubric. Some submissions may also include video evidence depending on your program version.

How many competency units is D093 worth?

The competency-unit value can vary by program version, so confirm the current number on your official WGU Degree Plan or in the WGU catalog rather than relying on secondhand figures. Your student portal is always the authoritative source for your specific program.

How long does D093 usually take?

Many students report finishing in a few focused weeks, though the timeline depends heavily on access to a classroom and the length of the instructional cycle you document. Plan around a real teaching loop and leave room for a possible revision.

Do I need to be teaching in a classroom to complete it?

D093 is built around evidence from actual students, so it typically aligns with a clinical or demonstration-teaching placement. Check your program sequence to confirm when it is scheduled relative to your field experience.

What is the most common reason submissions get returned?

Alignment problems and thin analysis lead the list: assessments that do not clearly measure the stated objectives, or data that is presented without a meaningful interpretation. Tightening those two areas resolves most revisions.

Where can I find trustworthy course details?

Rely on your WGU course of study, your course instructor, and the official task rubric first. You can also review WGU's teaching-degree information on the official site at wgu.edu. For related prep on this site, browse the School of Education hub or the full guide index, and if your program also requires quantitative coursework, see C362 Calculus I.