  Assessment tasks provide opportunities for students to make sense of novel
contexts in light of their existing ideas. Consequently, investigations in
physics education research have extensively developed and analyzed assessments
that support students sensemaking of their surrounding world. In the current
work, we complement contemporary efforts by theoretically exploring assessment
task features that increase the likelihood of students sensemaking in physics.
We identify the task features by first noting the salient characteristics of
the sensemaking process as described in the science education literature. We
then leverage existing theoretical ideas from cognitive psychology, education,
and philosophy of science in unpacking the task features which elicit the
characteristics of sensemaking. Furthermore, we leverage Conjecture Mapping --
a framework from design-based research -- to articulate how the proposed task
features elicit the desired outcome of sensemaking. We argue that to promote
sensemaking, tasks should cue students to unpack the underlying mechanism of a
real-world phenomenon by coordinating multiple representations and by
physically interpreting mathematical expressions. Major contributions of this
work include: adopting an agent-based approach to explore task features;
operationalizing conjecture mapping in the context of task design in physics;
leveraging cross-disciplinary theoretical ideas to promote sensemaking in
physics; and introducing a methodology extendable to unpack task features which
can elicit other valued epistemic practices such as modeling and argumentation.
