Choosing the Right Assessment Tool
Transcript
00:01There's a lot of tools.
00:03And so sorting through them and figuring out
00:07which one works best
00:09is not always easy and can be overwhelming.
00:13But I think that's what most coordinators find
00:17is there's one or two tools that they feel most comfortable with
00:21and that aligns with their approach to learning and assessment.
00:25One of the ways to approach
00:28using an assessment tool
00:31is to definitely familiarize yourself
00:33with the tool before you use it.
00:36So read through it,
00:37understand what it is it's assessing for.
00:41How is it administered for the learner?
00:43How do you prep the learner for taking this assessment?
00:47How do you explain to the learner the results?
00:49Oftentimes, different assessment tools
00:52will actually explain to you
00:54how to have that conversation with the learner.
00:57So those are all really important things to do
01:00before you actually give the assessment to the learner.
01:03it's irresponsible to hand an assessment to a learner
01:07without actually having looked at it beforehand
01:10and having some understanding
01:12about how it should be administered.
01:15So a tip that might help in figuring out
01:19if this is the right assessment tool to use with the learner,
01:23is think about how you would explain
01:27this assessment tool to the learner.
01:30"We're going to do this assessment
01:32"because it's going to help you know what skills you need
01:36"in order to be able to write these forms at work better."
01:40If I can connect this assessment to their goal,
01:44then clearly that's an assessment tool we can use.
01:47If I'm having difficulty framing
01:49how this assessment tool connects to their learning goal,
01:52then we may need to rethink which tool we're using.
01:56We're not looking for formal
02:00grading or a standardized test
02:03because we don't need to compare this learner's skills
02:07to some other learner's skills.
02:10We do intake evaluations with our students.
02:13We use the CARA word list,
02:14as well as we use Read Forward and Write Forward
02:16which are assessments
02:19that have been created by Bow Valley College
02:21and they help identify what people are really strong at
02:23and also what they're weak at,
02:24which is a really important part,
02:25is what are you really good at?
02:27So let's work on things around that
02:29as well as what you need help with.
02:32As the literacy coordinator,
02:33I worked a lot with literacy learners
02:37and doing an assessment of their reading skills.
02:40I had a couple different assessments that I used
02:43and not always did they give me information
02:49that told me exactly what kind of skills
02:52that we could teach, like concrete skills.
02:55I could identify what comprehension level they had,
03:01some of the vocabulary they had,
03:04but how do you break that down into teaching reading?
03:08And so I started looking for assessments
03:10that would give me that kind of information.
03:14Information that tells me
03:17what are the gaps in their learning,
03:19if I know what their goal is
03:20and I can pick an appropriate tool,
03:22one of the criteria I used for choosing a tool
03:26was if it would give me useful information.
03:29So just knowing what level a learner's at
03:32tells me nothing about what they need to learn.
03:35So I needed to have a tool that would give me specific skills
03:39or knowledge that I could tell the tutors
03:42and direct the tutors to be working on with the learner.