I have recently been writing assessments for students on productivity-related courses. This is one of the more difficult exercises in academic life - and, of course, exceedingly important ...both for the quality of the qualification involved - and for the future life of the students.
One of the advantages is that it makes you think carefully about what you are testing - and therefore about the content and makeup of the course. Assessment is in some ways a summary of the course - setting out its main purposes. The big distinction between different types of course is whether, on successful completion, students should know stuff - or be able to do stuff. This reflects massively in the forms of assessment you can use. Testing 'doing' is much harder than testing 'knowing'.
I am much more interested in the 'doing' - after all I want people to be able to improve productivity, not know about improving productivity in theory. I think the assessments we use are getting better at testing the 'doing' but our situation, and our testing, is complicated because wev are creating online courses - with online assessments.
I will improve - I review student performance on assessments and try to work out where the flaws in the assessment itself have contributed to poor performance.
What I am trying to do, of course, is to improve my productivity - not in producing more assessments in the same timescale (though that would be nice) but by improving the quality of the assessments - and thus the value offered to customers(students).
Think about this when you train - and assess the effectiveness of your training by formal or informal assessment.
Productivity pops up everywhere, doesn't it! If you can't improve your own productivity, how can you expect to encourage and urge others how to do it?
One of the advantages is that it makes you think carefully about what you are testing - and therefore about the content and makeup of the course. Assessment is in some ways a summary of the course - setting out its main purposes. The big distinction between different types of course is whether, on successful completion, students should know stuff - or be able to do stuff. This reflects massively in the forms of assessment you can use. Testing 'doing' is much harder than testing 'knowing'.
I am much more interested in the 'doing' - after all I want people to be able to improve productivity, not know about improving productivity in theory. I think the assessments we use are getting better at testing the 'doing' but our situation, and our testing, is complicated because wev are creating online courses - with online assessments.
I will improve - I review student performance on assessments and try to work out where the flaws in the assessment itself have contributed to poor performance.
What I am trying to do, of course, is to improve my productivity - not in producing more assessments in the same timescale (though that would be nice) but by improving the quality of the assessments - and thus the value offered to customers(students).
Think about this when you train - and assess the effectiveness of your training by formal or informal assessment.
Productivity pops up everywhere, doesn't it! If you can't improve your own productivity, how can you expect to encourage and urge others how to do it?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment