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Your Assessment Strategy (Part 4: Defining Terms)
by Steven B. Just
Part
3
Practitioners in scientific fields tend to agree
on terminology. When a chemist talks about a molecule all
chemists agree on the definition of a molecule. When a pharmacologist
discusses the mechanism of action of a drug everyone in that
field agrees on what the term “mechanism of action”
means. In testing though there is no single agreed upon nomenclature.
Probably this is because the language of testing is part of
the vernacular. We have all been taking tests in one form
or other since kindergarten, using whatever terminology our
teachers used. What is the difference between a test and an
exam? What makes a quiz a quiz and not a test? Where do evaluations
fit into all this? And what’s an assessment?
Though there is no single agreed-upon answer
to all these questions it is important when developing an
assessment strategy to have an internally consistent vocabulary
within your organization. That way when a trainer decides
to give an “exam” everyone will know exactly what
that entails and, more important, what the performance expectations
are for the test takers. Below are our recommendations for
a testing vocabulary. You don’t have to use our vocabulary
exactly; this is not the only way to define these terms (though
obviously your terminology should make intuitive sense –
don’t call a high stakes test a quiz), but you need
to be internally consistent.
Assessment—the
overarching term for any instrument that is used to evaluate
or judge and from which conclusions can be drawn either about
an individual, a group or the learning program itself.
Quiz—a
low-stakes assessment that has no long-term consequences.
It can take the form of a self-assessment so the learner can
diagnose his/her own strengths and weaknesses or a diagnostic
quiz so an instructor knows the entry-level knowledge of the
learners.
Test—a
medium-stakes assessment that has immediate consequences but
no long-term consequences. Module level tests in a mastery
learning system fit this category: The learner must pass the
Module 1 test before being allowed to proceed to Module 2,
etc. There may be no limit to the number of test tries and
the scores may not be permanently recorded in a system of
record, but there are immediate consequence to failure: the
inability to proceed through the learning system. These tests
are often called “formative assessments.”
Exam—a
high-stakes assessment that has long-term consequences for
job status: “You must pass this exam to be considered
qualified to perform your job.” Typically exams have
limited numbers of tries, higher security, a formal system
of remediation, and escalating consequences for repeated failure.
Final assessments that test an entire learning system, often
called “summative assessments,” are frequently
considered high-stakes.
Evaluation—a
form of assessment in which a judgment is made either about
the learning program itself (Level 1 in Kirkpatrick terms)
or the learner by human raters. The latter frequently takes
the form of a role-play in which multiple raters score (typically
on a Likert scale) a learner on his or her ability to perform
a job function.
Note:
To simplify terminology one of our clients has collapsed Tests
and Exams into a single category. They have assessments without
consequence (Quizzes) and assessments with consequence (Exams
or Tests).
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