WGU D293: Assessment and Learning Analytics

Where D293 Fits in Your Master's Program

D293, Assessment and Learning Analytics, is a three-competency-unit graduate course in WGU's School of Education. You will meet it in the M.Ed. in Education Technology and Instructional Design and in the M.S. in Learning Experience Design and Educational Technology, where the standard path places it in your very first term alongside the learning design foundations courses. In the M.S. version, Learning Experience Design Foundations II is listed as a prerequisite, so it assumes you already speak a little of the language of instructional design before you open the first module.

Direct answer: Pass D293 by learning the assessment vocabulary until it is automatic, then practicing it in scenario form. Read every question as "what is this designer trying to accomplish, and which assessment or analytics choice actually serves that goal?" rather than hunting for a memorized definition, and take the pre-assessment early so your remaining study time lands on your real gaps instead of the material you already know.

WGU's own course description is unusually concrete for this one. D293 focuses on applying assessment and learning analytics practices to gauge learner progress through e-learning products. It introduces assessment models, including competency-based and skills-based approaches. It covers culturally responsive design and Universal Design for Learning as applied to assessments, rubrics, and feedback. And it introduces learning analytics specifically as an extra layer of validation and visibility on how learners are progressing.

In plain terms, this is the course that teaches you to prove learning happened. Everything else in your program is about building the experience; D293 is about knowing whether the experience worked and what to change when it did not. A lot of students open it expecting a statistics course and are relieved to find it is not one: the analytics content is about interpretation and decision-making, not computing regressions. If your background is K-12 teaching, you will recognize much of the assessment theory from courses like D184 Standards-Based Assessment, though D293 reframes it for online and adult learning products rather than for a classroom gradebook.

The Five Content Clusters D293 Tests

D293 is assessed by an objective assessment: a proctored exam you schedule yourself, not a written task submitted to an evaluator. Because program versions are revised over time, confirm the assessment type on your own course page before you plan around it. There is also a pre-assessment, normally available to retake, and using it well is the single highest-leverage thing you can do in this course.

The official competencies point squarely at five clusters of content:

• Assessment alignment. Judging whether a chosen assessment strategy or method genuinely measures the stated learning goal and objective, and spotting the mismatch when it does not.
• Assessment models and types. Competency-based and skills-based assessment, plus the standard family you must be able to distinguish instantly: diagnostic, formative, summative, and ipsative, along with the difference between measuring against a standard and measuring against a peer group.
• Learning analytics in practice. How data collected about learners is used to understand and optimize learning and the environments in which it happens. Be ready to work with the descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive layers of analytics and to reason about what each layer can and cannot justify.
• Feedback quality. Evaluating the feedback learners receive during online assessment activities. Timing, specificity, tone, actionability, and whether the feedback points back to the goal rather than to the person.
• Accessibility, fairness, and bias. Recommending modifications that remove barriers, keep assessments equitable, and minimize bias, with Universal Design for Learning and culturally responsive design as the guiding frameworks. Rubric construction sits here too.

Around those clusters, plan on holding the vocabulary any assessment professional carries: validity, reliability, the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning domains, and the levels of cognitive demand used to write objectives.

How Hard Is D293? A Course That Punishes Skimming

Honest answer: public student discussion of D293 is much thinner than for WGU's big undergraduate courses, so be skeptical of any confident "finish it in a weekend" number you find online, especially from sites selling you something. What can be said with confidence is structural: it is a three-CU course, one of the smaller units in a program where graduate students are expected to enroll in at least eight CUs per term, and it is scheduled early precisely because later courses build on it.

The difficulty is not conceptual depth; it is discrimination. Most of the ideas are intuitive on first read, which lulls people into skimming. Then the exam gives you a short scenario where three of the four options are defensible instructional choices and only one is the best answer for the goal described. Students who memorized definitions struggle with that. Students who practiced applying the definitions do not. Treat it as a medium-difficulty course that rewards active work, and plan for focused study across a couple of weeks rather than a single cram session.

A Four-Phase Study Plan for D293

Phase one: map before you read. Take the pre-assessment before you study anything, even though it will feel uncomfortable. Its purpose is diagnostic, not evaluative, which is a lesson the course itself teaches. Write down which competency areas came back weak and let that list drive your reading order.

Phase two: build a vocabulary layer with spaced repetition. Make your own flashcards, one term per card, with a short definition on the back and one original example. Original examples matter more than the definitions. "Ipsative" sticks when your card says "the learner's third draft scored against their own first draft," not when it says "compared to prior performance." Review them in short sessions over several days rather than in one long block; the spacing is what moves the terms into recall.

Phase three: switch to scenario drills. This is where most of your gain is. Take any learning objective and ask yourself, in writing: which assessment type fits, what would the rubric criteria be, what feedback would a learner receive, what analytics would tell me it worked, and what would I change for a learner using a screen reader or one whose cultural context differs from the designer's. Do this from memory first, then check against the course material. Five worked scenarios teach you more than fifty rereads.

Phase four: retrieval practice, not rereading. Close the book and write out the four analytics layers, the assessment types, and the UDL principles from blank paper. Anything you cannot produce cold goes back into the flashcard rotation. Retake the pre-assessment last, and use its coaching report to steer the final day of review. The same discipline of alignment you practice here carries directly into design-heavy courses such as D630 Designing Curriculum and Instruction I.

Where Students Lose Points in D293

• Confusing diagnostic and formative assessment. Both happen before the end. The distinction is timing and purpose: diagnostic establishes the starting point, formative steers the journey.
• Treating analytics as a synonym for dashboards. The exam cares about what a given data view licenses you to conclude and do, not about tools or charts.
• Claiming prediction from descriptive data. Knowing what happened is not knowing what will happen, and neither one tells you what to do. Keep those layers separate.
• Writing rubric criteria that describe effort rather than evidence. Good criteria are observable and tied to the objective.
• Treating accommodation as a bolt-on. UDL is about designing the assessment so fewer modifications are needed in the first place; questions often reward the option that reduces the barrier by design.
• Confusing culturally responsive design with content swaps. It is about removing context-dependence that unfairly advantages some learners, not about adding decorative diversity to scenarios.
• Skipping the pre-assessment to "save time." Sitting the real exam without a diagnostic baseline is exactly the practice this course argues against.

D293 Readiness Checklist

• Can you define diagnostic, formative, summative, and ipsative assessment and give an original online-learning example of each without looking?
• Can you look at a learning objective and explain, in a sentence, why a specific assessment method does or does not align with it?
• Can you name the descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive layers of analytics and say what decision each one supports?
• Can you rewrite a vague piece of learner feedback so it is timely, specific, and pointed at the goal?
• Can you draft three rubric criteria for a performance task that are observable rather than subjective?
• Can you identify at least two barriers in a sample assessment and propose UDL-consistent changes that remove them for everyone?
• Can you explain the difference between an assessment being reliable and being valid, using a case where one holds and the other does not?
• Have you taken the pre-assessment at least twice, with real study in between, and seen your weak areas move?

D293 FAQ

Is WGU D293 an objective assessment or a performance assessment?

D293 is assessed by an objective assessment, a proctored exam you schedule through WGU, with a pre-assessment available to practice on beforehand. Some third-party pages describe it as a performance assessment; check your own course page in the WGU portal, since programs are revised between catalog versions.

How many competency units is D293 worth?

Three competency units. It sits in the first term of the standard path for both the M.Ed. in Education Technology and Instructional Design and the M.S. in Learning Experience Design and Educational Technology.

Do I need a math or statistics background for the analytics part?

No. The learning analytics content is conceptual. You are asked to reason about what data reveals about learner progress and what decisions it supports, not to run calculations. Comfort reading a simple chart is plenty.

Is there a prerequisite for D293?

In the M.S. Learning Experience Design and Educational Technology program guide, Learning Experience Design Foundations II is listed as a prerequisite. The M.Ed. program guide does not list one. Confirm the sequence for your own program version with your program mentor.

What should I do if I do not pass on the first attempt?

You will receive a coaching report showing which competency areas fell short. Take it to your course instructor, build a short targeted plan around only those areas, and use retrieval practice rather than rereading. A retake is a normal part of a competency-based model, so treat the report as data and move on.

Where can I find the official course information?

Start with your Degree Plan in the WGU portal, then the published program guide for your degree on the WGU education technology and instructional design program page. For more independent prep guides, see our School of Education hub or browse all WGU course guides.

This guide is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by Western Governors University, and it contains no exam content.