Assessment Design

Good assessment design is the key to improving learning retention, fostering appropriate learning behaviors and achieving measurable learning outcomes.

Learning is not just a process of gathering knowledge but of creating skills and competencies among learners to apply this learning. For this to occur, there must be ways to measure the extent of learning achieved and the gaps that exist. Assessments and feedback serve this important purpose in the learning process -whether academic or professional.

WHY IS ASSESSMENT DESIGN IMPORTANT?

A good assessment design is crucial in creating an assessment experience that is both motivating and meaningful for the learners and the teachers. An assessment that is not just relevant and authentic, but one that encourages interaction and dialogue and allows students to apply their knowledge based on their personal experiences would add value to the overall learning process. Feedback is integral to assessments and devising effective ways to get feedback to learners in an easy-to-understand way makes for a positive learning climate.

ASSESSMENT DESIGN SERVICES AT CONSCIENCE

Our Assessment Design Team designs, develops, tests and validates bespoke, interactive assessments across learning content and competency levels.

At Conscience, we firmly believe that a good design should make the assessment provide a reference point for evaluating the quality of learning, the degree of achievement of the learning outcomes and the areas where improvement is required. It should be able to reinforce expected standards and communicate the criteria for evaluation lucidly.

In line with the assessment design best practices, we design assessments that allow the learners to exercise choice in relation to topics, assessment format and the timing of the assessment. Our assessment design provides ample scope to develop reflective skills among learners so that they can direct and regulate their learning. Effective feedback mechanisms are built into the assessment design to ensure that the learners understand the feedback and are able to bridge the gaps in their learning outcomes. Rubrics and other grading criteria are weaved into the assessments to provide adequate information on what is being assessed, to what extent and what are the optimum standards.

All digital assessments are designed to fit into the learning content so that it can provide ample opportunity within the learning process to practice, support and reinforce the learning concepts (formative assessments). In addition, our summative assessments provide for adequate measures to check the understanding and grade the learner on their performance.

The assessment design team at Conscience, undertakes a three-stage, iterative process to design and develop assessments: