The STEER check

Five dimensions, run before anyone else uses what you built

Run this once the thing works and before anybody else touches it. The five names come from the Anchor & STEER framework, where the person using the tool was assumed to be a classroom teacher. Here that person is whoever you built it for, including you.

S

Shared Mental Model

Transparency that teaches, not just tells

Someone using this should come away knowing something they did not know before, beyond the fact that it ran. Showing the reasoning is not the same as showing the output.

T

Teacher-Set Guardrails

The policy layer the educator authors themselves

Constraints are not limitations. When an educator sets the boundaries, they are stating their own practice out loud, and the tool's settings become a mirror for what they actually believe.

E

Escalation Pathways

Knowing when to hand off, not just hand over

The design problem is friction. An escalation has to be light enough that it actually happens and visible enough that the person feels informed rather than ambushed.

E

Evolving Delegation

Trust that deepens and stays reversible

Never automate something the person still needs practice doing. Pulling control back is not a failure, it is the judgment the tool is supposed to support.

R

Reflective Feedback Loops

Learning that flows both ways

The question moves from whether the tool got it right to what its user learned from the exchange. Every override and every dismissed suggestion is information going the other way.

Computational Collaboration Curriculum · curriculum.jamelna.com · CC BY-SA 4.0