Assess making and building with confidence.
A common language for K–12 educators to evaluate craft, systems, and shared practices in project-based learning.
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Look up a Code
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Enter a full or partial OMBS code to see its details.
Crosswalk Mappings
Alignments between OMBS dimensions and other national standards.
About OMBS
The Open Making and Building Standard (OMBS) is a framework to assess making and building across K–12 education.
Purpose
The Open Making and Building Standard (OMBS) describes the practices learners use when they originate artifacts (making) and construct structures and systems (building). It gives educators, curriculum designers, assessment authors, ed-tech tools, and researchers a shared vocabulary — independent of subject area, medium, or pedagogy.
OMBS is not a content standard. It specifies what good making and building look like, so that any subject's projects can be assessed for the practices they exercise.
Five Design Principles
1. Practice over outcome. OMBS describes what learners do, not what they produce. A polished artifact made through copying does not satisfy the standard.
2. Medium-agnostic. The same code applies whether the artifact is a poem, a circuit, a community event, a research argument, or a Minecraft world.
3. Process-visible. Evidence descriptors reward learners who make their thinking observable: drafts kept, choices defended, revisions documented.
4. Audience-real. Both making and building presuppose someone the work is for. OMBS expects learners to identify and respond to a real audience.
5. Failure-positive. A learner who tested, failed, and revised demonstrates more of the standard than one whose first attempt happened to work.
Code Format
- Domain: S (Shared Practices), M (Making), B (Building)
- Grade Bands: K2, 35, 68, 912
- Example:
OMBS.S.DF.35.1— Shared, Define, grades 3–5, component 1
License & Citation
This standard is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. You are free to share and adapt it with attribution.
Source: github.com/sunnypatneedi/ombs