905 None of the Above: How Good Intentions Create Bad Assessments
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM Thursday, March 28
Data and Measurement
Salon 9
As more learning and training is delivered online, instructors and trainers no longer have the opportunity to get to know all their learners by meeting them face-to-face. This disconnect often leads to missing or ineffective assessments as eLearning developers increasingly hope their learners understand the content, but lack the tools to adequately measure the level of understanding. How do you know if your eLearning assessments are effective? Are you testing learners’ content knowledge, or do your assessments measure their deduction skills? In this session, you will explore common test-writing pitfalls and discover how smart test-takers excel without learning the content.
This session will help trainers and eLearning developers recognize high-quality, content-driven assessments and provide an opportunity to experience poorly written test items from the point of view of the test-taker. Learn multiple-choice question-writing “rules,” such as including plausible distractors; learn to recognize common test-item pitfalls, like convergence; and find out how smart test-takers use grammatical cues and distractor length to make educated guesses. Combine all of these best practices, and you will take your eLearning assessments to the next level!
In this session, you will learn:
- Best practices for multiple-choice assessments
- About common assessment-writing pitfalls and how to avoid them
- How to connect assessments to stated learning objectives
- How to identify the depth of knowledge (DOK) level of a learning objective
- How to match the DOK level of an assessment item to its stated learning objective
- About the consequences of relying on poorly written assessment items
Audience:
Designers, developers, trainers, and other training professionals
Sean Hickey
Lead Curriculum Developer
Ohio State University
Sean Hickey is a curriculum developer and instructional designer at Ohio State’s Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE). As part of his role, he facilitates item-writing workshops for statewide career-tech end- of-course tests and industry credentialing exams, and he develops eLearning materials for teachers and subject matter experts. Sean was previously an instructional designer at McGraw-Hill Education, where he partnered with Apple in the creation of the first generation of interactive iPad textbooks. He has taught educational technology courses and is actively involved in several instructional design groups and associations at both the state and national level.
Cara North
Learning & Development Leader, Speaker, & Author
Medical Mutual
Cara North is an award-winning learning leader who has worked in both corporate and higher education settings, as well as an independent consultant. Cara currently manages the learning and performance function at Medical Mutual. She is the author of Learning Experience Design Essentials and serves as a lecturer at Boise State University in their Organizational Performance Workplace Learning (OPWL) masters and certificate program.