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Assessment Plans-First is Last

Be honest. When you sit down to plan something do you put down your end goals and work your way backwards? Carefully outlining each step to reach your goal?

If you are like most people, you are looking for shortcuts because you are time poor and the pressure is on.

This can be particularly true when designing online training courses. You get the marching orders to design something to train the staff or your students and you have two months to do it with a limited budget.

Where to start?

The eLearning Guild has come out with a valuable e-book called, Writing Assessments to Validate the Impact of Learning. The book also provides some handy templates.

One of them, the Assessment Plan Template, gives you a good idea of the areas you need to be clear on when you start shopping around for an learning management system to deliver the training.

The key points include:

  • How is the course going to be delivered (mobile platform, training room desktops,
  • Course duration can be measured in days, hours minutes
  • Key Learning Objectives numbered and written out
  • Course outline—names of modules and topics covered
  • Assessments: kinds of questions that will be used to assess learning goals

The idea is to give you an overview of how you need to put everything together before you even sit down to write the course.

When it comes to writing assessments, the Guild has also come up with some helpful recommendations:

  • Write the correct answer first and peg it to the courseware that explains the answer
  • Randomise the correct answer
  • Avoid use of “all of the above” or “none of the above”
  • Make sure your incorrect answers are plausible and about the same length as your correct ones
  • Avoid words with multiple meanings
  • Make your questions sharp and clear in active voice
  • Focus on only one thought with each question
  • Avoid using negatives in questions like “not” and “except”
  • Do not give clues to the correct answer in the question

Once you establish your learning goals, please contact My Learning Space for an assessment of your learning needs and how best they can be delivered.

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