Posted by: Karen Trog, TBD Consulting Director of Learning Services
We've been getting a lot of questions from clients on learning assessment design, so we're reposting this article from Sept. 2008 written by our guru of questions, Karen.
Information by itself is meaningless. It only holds value if the learner knows what to do with it. You want to know how the learner will use the information and then build your assessment scenarios around that.
These three questions provide a simple structure for developing scenario-based assessment questions. These steps can help you convert questions that might normally be presented in a typical format and put it in a context that is more like the learner’s real-world. The more the decisions are relevant to the learner’s world, the more likely they’ll be engaged with the assessment, meet your behavioral objectives, and actually improve their real-world job performance.
What situations require the learner to know this information?
Step away from just testing learners on facts or information and build a scenario. There’s a reason that the course content or communication is important to the learner. Create a circumstance where the learner gets to use the knowledge. The benefit to this is that for an experienced learner, this will help to confirm what they already know. For a novice learner, applying this information to a scenario will help them learn.
What choices could they be expected to make in that circumstance?
For each circumstance, figure out what types of choices a person would make. Use a subject matter expert to share different experiences and possible outcomes.
Make the choices real and not so obvious. Avoid offering an obvious or solid choice with other choices that are easy to weed out. Life isn’t like that. The real world requires making some decisions and then dealing with issues that come from those decisions.
For more complex content, it is not always necessary to have a single right answer and a set of wrong choices. Offer choices that are somewhat right and somewhat wrong and force the learner to pick from the best of the choices. The nuances can be addressed in the feedback.
What are the consequences of those choices?
Each choice can produce a consequence that generates feedback. This is an excellent opportunity to introduce some of the specific course content that learners may have clicked through in an online course or may have missed in a classroom. To support the learning, create a process that allows the learner to get the information needed to solve the problem. For example, you can:
• Link to site resources
• Link to training vignettes
Feedback can provide direct statements such as, “The current process requires….” allows reinforcement of some of the course content in small chunks. Or it can be created to flow more like real life with a set of follow-up situations that produce more choices.
