Assessment | Faith Jennings

Assessment Items

Learning Solution

New and revised assessment items for a woodworking safety exam.

Client

Master’s degree coursework, 2022

Skills & Tools Used

Learning objectives, task analysis, item creation, rubrics

Stakeholder Feedback

“These are a big improvement! Can you rewrite the whole test?”

Kelly Baird, Utah Valley University

My Approach

As an instructional designer, I’m especially interested in assessment. Measuring student knowledge is key to designing learning experiences, and having valid data enables designers to improve those experiences.

There are many challenges with assessment, but I believe that intentionally mapping items to learning objectives, crafting straightforward items, and designing quality rubrics will take you a long way to creating valid and useful assessments.

I’m including samples of coursework I completed for my master’s degree to illustrate my approach to assessment.

Project Story

The Challenge

Analyze an existing exam and improve it using instructional design assessment principles.

My Role

I analyzed the existing exam and worked as the instructional designer and SME to create new exam items.

The Solution

The new assessment questions were received well by the instructor and students. The instructor asked me to rewrite the complete exam, which I plan to do on a volunteer basis in late 2023.

Process Details

Select an image to zoom in.

Task Analysis

The content area description, a GIO, and SLOs for the quiz I created.

Introductory material

I created this labeled photo of a table saw for the learner to refer to during the exam.

Context Dependent Items

I created these new items for the quiz. By including items that rely on introductory material, the learner engages in a higher level of learning according to Bloom’s Taxonomy. In order to answer these items, the learner must refer to the labeled photo and engage in analysis instead of relying merely on recall.

Rubric for Improved Validity

Using an intentionally-designed rubric helps avoid scoring bias and improves the validity of an assessment. The rubric for this woodworking quiz includes details for scoring a short-answer item.

Revised Question

The original question from this safety exam had a high cognitive load; 58% of students missed it. Revising the question can make it a more valid assessment of student knowledge.