- [Narrator] How can you tell how good a job you've done
as a trainer or instructional designer?
By assessing what your students actually learn.
So let's go over some of the ways you can measure
what your learners have learned.
Okay, most of us are teaching students how to do work tasks,
so one obvious way to measure what students learn
is to see how well they perform those tasks on the job.
A checklist is a popular way to do this.
Let's say you create a video
that shows warehouse specialists how to do specific tasks
with the forklift.
To assess how well they do those tasks,
You create a checklist of tasks
and have a supervisor administer it in the warehouse.
A second way we can gauge our students' knowledge
is to have them perform work tasks in an environment
that's pretty close to the real work environment.
This is called a simulation.
For example, a roleplay,
say one based on a selling situation
that's performed by knowledgeable, engaged players
is pretty darn close to the real thing.
A third way you gauge knowledge is through scenarios.
When you create a scenario,
you describe a real-life work situation through text,
images, video, and then you ask your student
what they should do given that situation.
For example, in a management fundamentals course,
the setup might be, Jenny,
who has always been a solid performer on your team
has been late to work four out of the last five days.
How should you approach her about that issue?
You see scenarios all the time in e-learning.
Last, you can gauge your students' knowledge
through traditional tests.
Even though a test is far removed from the work environment,
it's still an efficient and effective way
to assess what students have learned.
Alright, to just sum this up,
there are four ways you can assess the learner's knowledge.
You can assess it through on-the-job tasks.
You can assess it in an environment
that's pretty close to the real work environment,
we call this a simulation.
You can assess it in a scenario.
And finally, you can assess it through a traditional test.
If you'd like to learn more about assessment,
I strongly recommend Sharon Schrock
and William Coscarelli's book
"Criterion-Referenced Test Development."
It certainly shaped my thinking on the subject.