Visible Agency Design Coach
When AI can produce the work, can we still see the learner?
The Design Coach analyses a unit plan or assessment task and shows where student thinking, judgement, ownership and human capability are visible—and where the learning design may allow them to disappear.
AI can generate outputs, offer feedback, suggest alternatives and accelerate production. It cannot own the learner’s growth.
The Design Coach helps educators create learning where students must still question, compare, judge, revise, explain and take responsibility.
How the diagnostic works
Add your unit
Upload a document or paste the unit plan, assessment task or learning sequence.
See the evidence
The Design Coach identifies where human thinking and agency are clearly required, merely implied or currently missing from the design.
Strengthen the design
Receive specific, practical redesign moves, process checkpoints, student prompts and a revised task that preserve the intended learning.
The framework
Five core dimensions, scored out of 20
Thinking Visibility
Can we see the learner's thinking developing — questions, choices, reasoning, drafts, revisions, explanations and changes of mind?
Judgement
Does the learning require students to compare, evaluate, verify, select, reject, adapt and justify?
Ownership
Do students have responsibility for consequential decisions, quality, evidence and the meaning of the final work?
Metacognition
Are students planning, monitoring and evaluating their own learning — and using that awareness to improve what they do?
Effort Integrity
Does the learner still have to perform the intellectual work the learning is intended to develop, or can the difficult thinking be bypassed or outsourced?
Capability Demand
You choose one to three capabilities per unit from a seven-capability menu. Each is scored 0–4 and reported separately from the total out of 20.
AI Design Check
Only where AI is permitted: Transparency, Appropriate Use and Cognitive Bypass Risk, each scored 0–4 and reported separately — never added to the total.
The Design Coach evaluates what is visible in the submitted plan. A low score does not mean the teacher is not doing something. It means the design, as documented, does not yet make that element clear or dependable.