Writing Good Assessments
Whether it is an informal knowledge check, a project, or a big exam, assessment is an important part of any course. It’s how we know whether the learner has taken away what they were supposed to from the learning. But writing good assessments isn’t always easy.
For starters, what is a “good” assessment? Here’s a few criteria:
- A good assessment is a fair assessment. This means it is reliable (most simply defined as consistent), valid (measures what you want it to measure and results mean what you think they mean), accessible (provides equitable opportunities for learners to demonstrate their learning), and designed without bias.
- A good assessment is instructionally sensitive and educationally useful. This means the underlying concepts are connected to the curriculum or objectives of the learning, and don’t depend on things like experiences outside of the learning environment or test-taking skills. Further, the results provide information that is useful for instructors and learners and directly measure complex skills, rather than a proxy.
- A good assessment is meaningful and engaging. It supports transferable skills, such as higher order cognitive skills, over rote learning and basic procedures. It includes critical abilities from the expected outcomes of the learning, and measures these abilities as they would be used in the real world.
Writing an assessment that meets even most of these criteria is hard. It requires intentionality and planning, and even then, there are aspects that are difficult to control. Even if the assessment is perfect in theory, things can go wrong with the execution.
So what can instructors and instructional designers do to ensure that assessments are the best they can be? Here are some questions you can ask yourself when planning assessments to help keep the criteria for good assessment in mind:
- What do I want learners to know and be able to do? What do I hope to learn about the learners’ knowledge or skills?
- What content, skills, and knowledge should the activity be designed to assess?
- What evidence do I need to evaluate the appropriate skills and knowledge? How will I know when they know it and can do it well?
- Have I clearly defined the intended outcomes?
- Have I asked learners to show their ability and apply their knowledge and skills to real-world scenarios, where applicable?
- Have I ensured the assessment is fair and free from bias?
- Are the criteria I am using to assess clearly aligned with task requirements and learning objectives?
- Do the criteria I am using to assess measure observable behaviors or product characteristics? Am I assessing any extra, unintended, or irrelevant variables? Am I missing anything?
Good assessment is key to developing a good course. It will ensure learners are able to use the knowledge and skills they learned in their lives and give instructors essential information about where gaps need to be filled and refinements made in future iterations. Doing it well is worth the challenge.