401 How Good Intentions Create Bad Assessments
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Wednesday, September 30
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 we'll explore common test-writing pitfalls and discover how smart test-takers excel without learning the content. We will review high-quality, content-driven assessments and have the opportunity to experience poorly written test items from the point of view of the test taker. You'll learn multiple-choice question-writing “rules” such as including plausible distractors and how to recognize common test-item pitfalls, like convergence;. You'll find out how smart test-takers use grammatical cues and distractor length to make educated guesses. Combine all of these best practices, and take your eLearning assessments to the next level!
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.