Brain Science: Assessments—a Powerful Tool in Your Training Arsenal

Test time is not a happy time for many of us. Even though Ihave been out of school for a long time I still have nightmares about takingtests. It usually involves me showing up for an exam and realizing that I amentirely unprepared. So don’t get me wrong—I understand the anxiety my studentsexperience in the days before an exam. In fact, once one of my freshmanstudents approached me looking very distressed. “Dr. Kohn,” he said. “I am notgoing to be able to take the final exam next week. What excuses do you accept?”

Most of us have a tortured relationship with tests and thismay taint the way we think about testing within the corporate environment. Butin this month’s column, I’d like to ask you to keep an open mind and considerthe many ways that you can use assessment, especially online assessment, todramatically improve your organization.

Evaluate mastery

The most common use of assessments is to measure a learner’smastery of material. For example, in a psychology class, we might ask a student25 questions about a chapter to try to estimate how well they have comprehendedall of it. Get a lot right, we assume you understand the whole chapter and youearn an “A.”

Another kind of test is designed to make a prediction aboutthe future. For example, standardized tests, such as the SAT and GRE, aredesigned to predict who is most likely to be academically successful. In turn,colleges seek students with high scores presumably because they are most likelyto thrive at their university.

Both kinds of tests are potentially useful in corporate settings.For example, we might provide rewards to employees who retain the mostinformation or give a raise to those whose test scores predict high potential.

Boost memory

Assessment is also valuable because of its ability to actuallyincrease the amount of information retained in memory. The pioneering work of Henry Roediger, for example, shows that taking tests forces the brain to “effortfullyretrieve knowledge.” In turn, this retrieval effort seems to cue the brain thatthe retrieved information is important, hence the brain retains it.

Booster quizzing has immediate value in a corporate setting.On average, people forget 70% of what they learn in a day. However, when youprovide strategically timed testing, you can dramatically reshape theforgetting curve.

Assessprogram effectiveness

Assessment is also a great way to do an internal review ofyour training program. For example, you can compare the efficacy of trainers byassessing test scores of students in different classes. In his Ph.D.dissertation, the late Donald Kirkpatrick explained that you can use assessmentto evaluate your training program at four levels:

Reaction

How learners feel about the training

Learning

An increase in the learner’sknowledge or skill

Behavior

Changes in the learner’s job behavioras a result of the training

Results

Increases incorporate profits as a result of the training

Skill-gap assessment

Most organizations broadcast training, delivering the samemessage to everyone no matter what they may need. A strategic assessment,however, can help you identify skill gaps both before and after training. Let’ssay you are about to offer a course on consensus leadership. A pre-trainingassessment can identify who might need remedial information prior to thetraining and who might not need the training at all.

Following training, assessments can identify ongoing skillgaps. For example, if George scores poorly on your post-assessment evaluation,you know you need to give him more training. If everyone performs poorly onyour post-assessment evaluation, you have learned something even moreimportant: you need a more effective training program.

Harvest best practices

Short answer assessments combined with discussion forums openup additional possibilities. For example, imagine asking your sales team thefollowing assessment question: “What is your best technique for upsellingpeople on a washing machine?” In the course of answering this question, theemployee will have an opportunity to review their approach, which reinforces itcognitively. Furthermore, if you use a social forum to share these answers witheveryone, you are transforming the learner into an additional teacher. Finally,if you give the learners the means to upvote some of their peers’ answers, yourlearners will vet one another’s’ answers and later you can conveniently harvesttheir best ideas.

Assessmentis an essential tool in training

As we have seen, you can use assessments in a variety of waysto benefit your organization. Yes, writing an effective assessment will bedifficult and time consuming. But once done, it will provide you with insightsinto your business that will allow you to make more strategic and effectivetraining decisions.

Digging deeper

Boostyour memory of this article

If you would like to have your memory of thisarticle reinforced, send an email to [email protected]. You willautomatically receive a series of boosters on this article. The boosters takeonly seconds to complete, and they will profoundly increase your ability to recall thecontent of this article.