Top tips for better assessments in elearning

Once you have a clear understanding of the needs and learning outcomes, assess if the topic in question even needs an assessment.

The focus needs to be on the learner’s and client’s needs – hence learning designers must work collaboratively with the client to make this happen by considering these questions early in the Analysis stage.

> Will your learner benefit from being assessed?

>  Will your learner see relevance in being assessed?

> Will your assessment contribute to the achievement of learning outcomes?

> Will your assessment contribute to increased learner retention?

If the answer is ‘Yes’ to all four questions, then carry on…

But if the purpose of an assessment is to highlight important areas, allow learners to reflect on a topic, or to simply confirm their understanding, all you may need are formative questions at logical intervals.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked to include 10 questions in the end-of-course assessment…

On probing why, the reason proffered is often that it ‘sounds’ like a reasonable number, or that 10 questions make it ‘feel’ like an assessment, or an ‘even’ number is better than ‘odd’.

Take a step back – your assessment strategy must align with your learning outcomes (which hopefully focuses on your learner’s needs). End of story.

If that means that three questions do the trick, so be it.

An organisation I worked with introduced a new mobile app for lodging incidents. They rolled the app out via an elearning course – lots of screenshots, simulations etc. They basically expected learners to learn the entire app through a 45-minute course.  At the end, an assessment expected us to score 100%.

Here’s what was wrong with that approach:

> This was an app that most employees would probably never use during their entire tenure in the company, yet were still expected to score 100%.

> If an employee didn’t want to use the app, he/she could use email instead, so why the pressure to score 100%?

On the other hand, a course on vaccinations for paediatric nurses required their learners to score 80% on the assessment – does that mean that it is acceptable in their roles to perform at 80% accuracy? Scary, isn’t it?

Your course content may be fantastic, but all it takes is ineffective writing for your assessment to lose credibility, like:

> Validity of options: Presenting ridiculous and irrelevant options in a multiple-choice question thus making the correct answer the only obvious choice.

> Length of the options: Inconsistent length of options with the correct answer being the most detailed and the longest (and thus obvious).

> Being lazy: How easy is it to write a ‘True or False’ question or options that include a ‘None of the above’ or ‘All of the above’? Neither add any value to our learning design. Avoid them like the plague!