The learning objective is to help tertiary lecturers design assessment plans and individual assessment tasks.
The development of appropriate assessment and its subsequent marking, is probably the most avoided job in a university teacher's year. The approach was to create a simulated class taking a typical subject and then give the user tools to construct appropriate assessments for the this particular group.
If a particular assessment is considered inappropriate by the students (or a group of advisors) then there is an immediate personal reaction. This reaction is individual with particular students expressing their opinions; and collective with obvious adjustments to attendance, homework completion, etc
The user can then edit a particular assessment task and try again. This time the reaction is hopefully more positive. As they work through building assessments for the semester the program helps them develop an actual template and a mind-set for designing assessment plans.
