Psychometric Assessment Paves the Way for the Proper Conduction of Assessment for Learning

While learning technologies have developed significantly over the past few years, we’ve unfortunately seen very little or next to nil development in the methodological part of learning. Organizations are often just using technological tools to mimic and model past behaviors or stay ahead of their competition or get busy complying under the bandwagon effect thinking as to the way things have been done before instead of figuring out new ways of working and understanding the purpose behind assessment for learning.

Why is Assessment for Learning Important?

Assessment for learning evaluations are primary examples of this where corporates have tried imparting the purpose of acquiring knowledge. Whereas in some corporations HR has been using practices like 360 feedback for some time to enforce a better feedback mechanism loop. This is the reason why learning and Development often still resorts to trying to model and grade complex behaviors in simple numerical or binary terms.

Furthermore, it has become the norm for corporations that often rely on immediate, transactional testing for assessments and other methods of evaluations. This may be due to many reasons but partly due to technical limitations (e.g. with the upcoming technologically advanced digital realm, there are comprehensive and multiple streams of assessments that has become a challenge to SCORM), but most of it seems to be stemming from lack of awareness. Yet, the reality is that most of these assessment methods tend to provide very little value beyond compliance.

Whereas the various shortcomings of “traditional” assessment are generally and majorly acknowledged in the education community which may have increased exposures in the corporate too as people seem to be too comfortable to start figuring out alternatives. Here are two mainstream genres of assessment for learning:

Types of Assessment for Learning

Summative and Formative Assessment:

Educationalists have attempted to divide assessment into two categories: summative and formative. To differentiate it more clearly, the summative assessment focuses on measuring learning at the end of the learning process, while the formative assessment seeks to measure it throughout the learning journey. In the summative assessment, most of the quantified indicators of performance are prevalent, hence the attachment of grades.

Whereas, formative assessment, on the other hand, makes use of evaluation methods that are rather more subtle and continuous. While summative assessment is generally considered to have higher stakes (assessment only happens in the end, hence the focus on test performance), however, formative assessment relies on smaller components of continuous feedback to form the bigger picture, and hence no individual mistake or failure will destroy one’s performance. Over the coming years, it has been generally noticed by many experts that organizations tend to heavily rely on summative practices, especially in the case of digital learning.

Psychometric Assessments:

Psychometric assessments are highly diverse as there are always different sets of evaluation tools that are used to objectively measure an individual’s personality traits, aptitude, intelligence, abilities, and behavioral style. These assessments are widely used to seek career guidance and to also assess how to scale up employment strategies by determining whether there is a match between a person’s abilities, characteristics traits and personality to be able to carry on with a suitable career profession.

There are many different kinds of styles of assessment following particular formats which are then broadly categorized into 3 main areas: Aptitude tests, behavioral tests, and assessment centers. However, these tests are not limited to a particular subject matter expertise since it’s a general assessment focusing on behavior, capacity, and psychological adjustment.

Usually, both these types of assessments such as aptitude tests and assessment day exercises have limited time frames that allow candidates to be assessed on how well they cope up with the time pressure.

Aptitude Tests:

These assessments aim to assess various cognitive abilities from numeracy and literacy skills along with spatial awareness.

Behavioral Tests:

All kinds of assessments under this category intend to highlight specific personality traits that could indicate suitability for specific job roles. These tests may be in various forms of personality questionnaires, leadership tests, motivation tests, and situational judgment tests that give insights into the personality.

Assessment Centers:

Most of assessment center's tests are based on judging or inspecting and testing the human interaction. These tests may also include various kinds of exercises that aim to utilize all specialized job-specific skills and simulations which are majorly carried out by assessors/psychologists.

It also ensures that the selection process and career guidance for employees are fair and are tailored towards scaling up their potential rather than following a one-size-fits-all approach. Besides, employers may not end up hiring the wrong employees if they evaluated them through the right means, and assessment for learning is the end to that! Therefore, it is high time corporates start incorporating such measures to ensure that their criteria of assessment are at par with what organizations consider legible and credible.