Did Someone Actually Invent the Multiple-Choice Question?

Often, when a product or service has existed throughout our entire lifetime it is hard to imagine what life was like before its invention. I remember asking my parents what they did before there were TVs. Similarly, children growing up today will have a hard time conceiving of a world before the mobile phone or …

It’s Now More Important Than Ever To Validate Assessments

Now that all learning has moved online (traditional eLearning, microlearning. virtual coaching, virtual classrooms, etc.) it’s important to look at the flip side of the learning coin: Assessments. As we’ve discussed many times in this blog there are two types of assessments: Assessments for learning -- sometimes called formative assessments Assessments of learning – sometimes …

Using Microlearning to Ensure Long Term Mastery

In our past two posts we examined strategies for using microlearning for (a) delivering new content and (b) creating a sustainment learning strategy. This week we will consider how to use microlearning in the case where there is a large learning event and the goal is to achieve and sustain mastery. Returning to the classic …

Why Are You Quizzing Me on What I Already Know?

Intela has a variety of evidence-based Microactivities that improve and sustain learning. One of the more popular activities is the Learning Sprint. A Learning Sprint is a flashcard-like exercise in which learners are required to answer questions from an item pool over a period of several days or weeks (exact scheduling can be set by …

You Have a Test. Have You Studied? Good. Are You Confident? Not So Fast.

Last week we showed the results of a survey that provided evidence that learners overwhelmingly choose to study for an exam by re-reading the course material, to the exclusion of other more effective study methods. But what about confidence? Who is more confident: learners who restudy or learners who take practice tests?  And how does …

The Benefits of No Stakes Quizzing

Large numbers of studies have demonstrated the benefits of repeated testing. Requiring learners to retrieve and process previously learned information reinforces what they know and strengthens the neural connections, leading to long term retention. Most of these studies use classic experimental design. They split a learning group in two: One group studies in the normal …

Moving the Measurement Goal Posts

By now most of us have bought into the idea that learning needs to be a process, not an event. Without a continuous learning process we get the dreaded post-learning event forgetting effect: But, if we want our learners to be able to apply what they have learned one month, three months or six months …

Low Competence/ High Confidence: There’s a Name for That

In our implementation of confidence-based learning we classify each test taker into one of four categories of confidence accuracy: Green  -- this is the goal state. The employee is both knowledgeable and confident. Yellow – the employee is knowledgeable, but is not confident in his/her knowledge Orange – the employee is neither knowledgeable nor confident. …

Authentic Assessments

I teach a workshop on “How to Create Fair, Valid and Reliable Tests.” The workshop focuses primarily on classic (usually multiple choice) knowledge-based exams. Since many of our clients use the Intela platform for sales training, most of them deliver two types of assessments: knowledge-based assessments to ensure content mastery and skills-based assessments to test …

How Good Are Your Test Questions? And How Do You Know?

I’ve written and reviewed tens of thousands of test questions. To state the obvious to anyone who has ever done it: Writing good test questions is difficult. It’s the reason that serious testing organizations, like those that produce the SATs and the ACTs, spend millions of dollars creating quality questions. Those of us who work …