Thursday, October 20, 2011

Assessment Questions

 
It is important to know the type of capability of a performance objective because learning can only be measured if it can somehow be observed first.  The performance objective should specify what behavior you will be able to see from the learner.  This is done by stating the capability the instructor expects the learner to use to satisfy the performance objective.  Performance objectives should be stated terms that clearly identify the behavior that will be demonstrated.  I think in a traditional, online assessment there are some capabilities that are easier to incorporate than others.  Multiple choice questions and true or false questions are very flexible and allow a sufficient sampling of the content material.  One reason for this is that more of these types of responses can be included in an assessment than of constructed-response items, such as essay questions.  In other words, the learner can answer more multiple choice and true or false questions in a set time frame than essays questions.  By including more questions, more of the content can be covered which will increase the generalizability of the assessment.  Fixed response questions can also measure procedural knowledge, like concepts and rules, easier than completion items. This can be done in a variety of ways, for example multiple choice questions can ask the learner to classify examples as correct or incorrect.  They can also measure a learner’s ability to apply a rule by having the learner choose the correct response to a problem where the other options offer common wrong solutions. Completion items are good for measuring a learner’s recall of information because there is less chance of guessing the correct answer.  Feedback can be easily incorporated when using fixed responses in an online assessment.  Fixed response items are graded by the computer program much easier than completion items are.  Although completion items can be automatically graded, there are often mistakes due to things like capitalization and spacing that do not match the instructor’s key.

No comments:

Post a Comment