Creating and selecting appropriate assessments is an entire field in itself. There are many resources on this site to help you create assessments, but in EVERY case, your assessments MUST be based on the goals and objectives you wrote earlier. Many of you can probably recall taking a class that seemed to cover certain topics in one way, while the tests seemed to be measuring something quite different.

For example, a unit in a history class may have covered many facts about the civil war. The students are drilled on dates, places, events. At test time, the instructor gives an essay test that calls for students to interpret nuances, explain interactions, and compare and contrast perceptions. Remember Gagne? The instructor has TAUGHT verbal information but is TESTING on intellectual skills and cognitive strategies. That creates a mismatch between the goals of instruction, the scope of the material covered, the analysis of learner skills, and how students might demonstrate new knowledge.

Think about YOUR course. Carefully consider the goals and objectives you've written.

Notice that assessment development is part of the design phase and development phase. Assessment instruments interact with the goals and learner analysis and are further modified as teaching strategies are determined (we will revisit assessments again under the teaching strategies element). Test items MUST be examined together with the goals of instruction and the scope of what was covered.

The next page shows how Elizabeth Nist handled this element of design in the freshman comp course.

Previous: Task Analysis

Next: Sample Course