Main Body
Assessment Instruments for Teaching With Rich Media
How can instructor competence be assessed?
There is no singularly accurate method to assess instructor competence for teaching with rich media. A training manager may choose to assess competence using whichever educational philosophy or instructional theory desired.
We offer two approaches to assessment that reflect typical approaches to competency assessment in-practice: the Key Phrase method based on objective measures of proficiency, and the Practitioner method which his based on the candidate’s value to a community of practice.
The Key Phrase method of designing assessment criteria
In the Key Phrase method, each Performance Statement is deconstructed down to its key word or phrase and then surrounded by qualifiers that are observed in a candidate’s work. Variations in the qualifiers serve as the levels of differentiation across the assessment instrument. This method was developed by and is used as a foundation for developing assessment instruments in the CWPro eportfolio assessment system (Chalk and Wire Learning Assessment, Inc., 2013).
The basic principles of the Key Phrase assessment instrument framework are:
- “Proficient” is designated as the target level of performance. A level beyond Proficient, such as “Exemplary,” is not a relevant level of assessment in this context because we are only interested in whether the candidate has achieved proficiency. Anything beyond attaining proficiency is extraneous, from a performance assessment perspective.
- The key phrase is retained throughout all levels of assessment. Progressing levels of assessment are differentiated according to the observable presence or absence of a set of qualifiers or indicators.
Below is an example of the Key Phrase method for constructing a proficiency statement:
Step 1: Select a Performance Statement:
“Write assignment briefs or prompts that draw from rich media engagement experiences that are relevant to instructional objectives.”
Step 2: Identify the key phrase embedded within the Performance Statement:
Key phrase: “Write assignment briefs…”
Step 3: Surround the key phrase with qualifiers or indicators that can be observed as a basis of determining proficiency. In this case, we will use “consistent and independent performance” as the observable criteria. This statement will become the Proficient level of assessment.
Proficient: “Able to consistently and independently write assignment briefs or prompts that draw from learners’ rich media engagement experiences that are relevant to instructional objectives.”
Step 4: Generate the other levels of assessment using variations of consistency and independence that can be observed in the performance. Additional assessment levels are provided below to demonstrate the range of granularity to describe performance.
Novice: “Able to identify instances for the need to write assignment briefs or prompts that draw from learners’ rich media engagement experiences that are r