So what’s a guy on a surfboard have to do with measuring learning? I mean other than surf pictures are already great. Well first I’d say he’s proficient. I might even say he’s a high performer.
What makes him so is not all the individual competencies like balance, physcial condition, position on the board, knowledge of the waves, etc. It’s his ability to put all these elements together without having to think about each part. In education and training it’s easy to get into the trap of breaking everything down into it’s pieces and parts and forget that they have to fit together in unique and different ways. You can test all the competencies and still find someone that doesn’t perform well. You’ve probably seen people who are good at tests and bad in real life.
What I recommend in measuring learning, education or training (I’ll do a post soon on the difference), is to look at creating a proficiency statement. This is a statement that combines three elements. First, you look at results. You can do it in terms of how much, how good and how fast. A proficiency for our surfer might be the number and variation of the wave’s he can handle or it might be the different tricks he can do.
Second, you look at independence. Is this something you can handle on your own without asking lots of questions. Sometimes it shows up in terms of being able to take initiative. For our surfer it might be something on wave selection or decided when to surf.
Third, there’s a level of confidence. This appears in a fluidity of motion, a fluency of language and an ability to focus. Confidence is usually directly observable. I think our surfer looks confident.
Sometimes you can get to proficiences by listing out all the competencies and then regrouping them by how they are actually used.
Now you have a set of measures that are directly observable or produce measurable results. In some cases like reading it goes from a test where you get a short reading assignment and then answer questions to see what you got out of it with a test of, here read this to me…know tell me what it was about. I guarantee you that the second test is more effective.
Once you have a clear measure of proficiency, then you’ll find it rather easy to determine and measure time to proficiency. One thing that time to proficiency will tell you is which teaching or training method actually works the best. If two teachers, teach the same thing to a group of 30 but use different methods, the one that got to proficiency faster has a best practice that others should copy.
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