accreditation/certification framework
Has anyone worked on developing an accreditation or certification framework? We are exploring ways of setting something up and need a Goframework as a structure for the organisation which hasn't done this before. We do have assessments built in our training courses but nothing formal. Any advice would be appreciated.
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I'd step a little further down the line (or onto the track in front of the train, as the case may be) and suggest that most assessment of 'knowing' that I've seen doesn't actually assess real knowledge acquisition at all.
In 99% of situations where some form of assessment of the 'learning' is applied, the assessment is carried out during or immediately following some type of learning/training event, or immediately following the opportunity for 'learners' to revise what they've been through during the training.
This simply tests short-term memory/retention. The pre-test/post-test model is particularly susceptible to misinterpretation and, I think, is potentially damaging as it can lead people to think that real learning has occurred when it hasn't, and that the training was 'successful' when it wasn't.
All it's really assessing is the ability of the 'learner' to retain information in short-term memory. And short-term memory ipso facto isn't a lot of use once a bit of time has passed. (where did I leave my glasses?)
There's a swathe of research into the difference between short and long-term memory. Learning professionals should know at least a bit about that stuff, and also appreciate that our job is to help people transfer learning into long-term memory which will result in changed behaviour. After all, real learning is nothing more than changed behaviours.
To dive a little deeper (just because I spent a few years studying biochemistry in my youth)......
Different proteins have been identified in the two processes of short-term memory retention and long-term memory retention. In the long-term memory process it's now know that serotonin producing cAMP (cyclic AMP), when in high concentrations in the synapses between neurones, activates a protein/enzyme called PKA (cAMP dependent Protein Kynase) which then targets CREB (the CAMP Respondent Element Binding protein)..... CREB is the 'key' to long-term memory, forming more and different types of synaptic connections that persist. Short-term memory retention is a different process and doesn't do this.
So, when we talk about assessment, are we talking about assessing short-term memory or long-term memory? If the former, what's the value?
Maybe just "LO" and everybody can choose what it means to them.
How about 'Payoffs'
Objectives? No surely those are yours, the corporate, the designer, the trainer... You have objectives to ensure that the learner leaves with an understanding of the subject.....
We must consider Learning Outcomes first, not Objectives. They are very different.
Should we not have our Objectives set in stone long before we get into the design of a course or the assessment, and, why should the objective have any bearing on the assessment process? If our objective is to test the user ad-nausium as we are doing presently in eLearning then we will eventually alienate them altogether.
Create the Learning outcomes and assessment can come from those outcomes, providing they happened.. Semantical I know, but a rather hot topic...
Venkat:
I agree we must not get into assessment driven learning, somebody called it learning by inquisition. I rather liked that term.
Running instructional design courses and speaking to many seeking the holy grail in assessment I find one very interesting common occurrence. Now I don't suggest for a minute that everyone falls into this, but it appears to be common.
Especially in eLearning courses are built, often by following ones knowledge rather than by pure design and then as an afterthought the content it trawled to try to find 20 questions to put into a bank to ask some or all of at the end, to prove what?
I now suggest that the whole instructional design process should start with the formation of the assessment. Then once you know what it is you are trying to assess, write the learning to teach it....
For some of you this is teaching your grandmother....... something about eggs!
But I am always surprised how many light-bulbs come on when I say this.