Chapter 4: Assessment Strategies Guidelines’ Lesson

Baker, Aguirre-Muñoz, Wang, and Niemi (2005) in their chapter in What Works in Distance Learning: Guidelines (O’Neil, 2005) presented 11 strategies for assessment. This chapter presents concrete examples of these strategies in the context of developing an assessment to measure knowledge about brake repair and replacement. The chapter opens with how to begin the assessment development process, starting with validity considerations, identifying the targeted cognitive demands, and ensuring domain representation of the assessment. Then, strategies for test specification, scoring, reliability, reporting, formative assessment, and specification of cut scores for certification tests are applied to an automotive braking system domain. Finally, formative and summative evaluation strategies are applied to a distance learning training program for the domain.