I have recently been writing assessments for students on productivity-related courses. This is one of the more difficult exercises in academic life - and, of course, exceedingly important ...both for the quality of the qualification involved - and for the future life of the students.
One of the advantages is that it makes you think carefully about what you are testing - and therefore about the content and makeup of the course. Assessment is in some ways a summary of the course - setting out its main purposes. The big distinction between different types of course is whether, on successful completion, students should know stuff - or be able to do stuff. This reflects massively in the forms of assessment you can use. Testing 'doing' is much harder than testing 'knowing'.
I am much more interested in the 'doing' - after all I want people to be able to improve productivity, not know about improving productivity in theory. I think the assessments we use are getting better at testing the 'doing' but our situation, and our testing, is complicated because we are creating online courses - with online assessments.
I will improve - I review student performance on assessments and try to work out where the flaws in the assessment itself have contributed to poor performance.
What I am trying to do, of course, is to improve my productivity - not in producing more assessments in the same timescale (though that would be nice) but by improving the quality of the assessments - and thus the value offered to customers(students).
Productivity pops up everywhere, doesn't it! If I can't improve my own productivity, how can I expect to teach others how to do it?
One of the advantages is that it makes you think carefully about what you are testing - and therefore about the content and makeup of the course. Assessment is in some ways a summary of the course - setting out its main purposes. The big distinction between different types of course is whether, on successful completion, students should know stuff - or be able to do stuff. This reflects massively in the forms of assessment you can use. Testing 'doing' is much harder than testing 'knowing'.
I am much more interested in the 'doing' - after all I want people to be able to improve productivity, not know about improving productivity in theory. I think the assessments we use are getting better at testing the 'doing' but our situation, and our testing, is complicated because we are creating online courses - with online assessments.
I will improve - I review student performance on assessments and try to work out where the flaws in the assessment itself have contributed to poor performance.
What I am trying to do, of course, is to improve my productivity - not in producing more assessments in the same timescale (though that would be nice) but by improving the quality of the assessments - and thus the value offered to customers(students).
Productivity pops up everywhere, doesn't it! If I can't improve my own productivity, how can I expect to teach others how to do it?
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