For most certifying organizations, high-stakes exams are a given. But what about low-stakes assessments?
Due to the lift required to develop and deliver high-stakes examinations, lower-stakes assessment tools are not always top of mind in certification program development. But can low-stakes assessments support the mission of certifying bodies across the full certification lifecycle? The answer is a resounding “yes” — if your certification management system supports them.
At Heuristic Solutions, we view assessments as a useful means to help evaluate user competencies, guide learning, or provide self-reflective feedback. Our LearningBuilder certification management software includes a flexible Assessment Engine that enables administrators to create and deliver a wide variety of low-stakes, computer-scored assessments as a part of the practitioner certification journey and lifecycle.
Here are some of the ways that we’ve seen these low-stakes assessments improve the candidate experience and add value to certification programs:
Assessments to Ensure Candidate Preparedness
Do you know if your applicants are ready to take — and pass — your high-stakes certification exam? More importantly, do they know?
While boards and organizations must studiously (forgive the pun) avoid teaching to the test, practice assessments offer feedback to help candidates gauge their readiness to sit for the exam. After all, it can be hard to realize your readiness until called upon in the moment.
LearningBuilder can offer several assessment tools to support your candidates’ discernment. For example, you can help them prepare with practice quizzes organized by domain area. In the application process, organizations often offer practice tests for a fee. Practice tests are also a great way to reuse retired or compromised items. A more comprehensive Candidate Readiness Assessment (CRA) delivered across domains can help identify knowledge gaps before the test (when it really counts).
Assessments in Recertification
After initial certification, organizations are often challenged by practitioner pushback to recertification via exam. It can also be a challenge to ensure recertification via continuing education (CE) is reliable and valid.
- Low-stakes assessments can support the recertification process in two key ways:
- Practitioners can take assessments to “test out” of CE requirements.
Continuous low-stakes assessments can replace a big recertification exam at the end of the recertification cycle.
Assessment tools can even support an alternate pathway to recertification. Organizations that steward certifications for rapidly evolving professions can fulfill their role in evaluating qualifications and keep their practitioners current using a curated selection of recently published journal articles with an assessment component.
No matter how you evaluate practitioners over the certification lifecycle, LearningBuilder’s assessment tools can assist you in developing a meaningful recertification process.
Assessments to Support Assessment-Based Certificate Programs
Assessment-based certificate programs are an emerging trend gaining traction in the certification industry. They can fill gaps in an exam blueprint and offer an alternate eligibility pathway to professional practice. They can create opportunities for further specialization within a certification and ensure practitioners in different cohorts adhere to the same industry standards.
LearningBuilder has the eLearning and assessment capabilities required to support assessment-based certificate programs and can automate printed or digital credentials for those who pass the assessment.
Assessments to Gather Feedback at the End of a Process
When is a quiz not a quiz? When it’s a survey! Surveys allow applicants and practitioners to assess their experience with a process and offer specific feedback. With this type of assessment, the “right” answers are the ones that can help shape the future of your program.
LearningBuilder supports collecting targeted feedback on processes within the application (like courses) and the application as a whole. You can even survey test takers on their assessment experience.
LearningBuilder: Robust Certification Management Software with Seamless Assessment Tools
LearningBuilder supports multi-section assessments with navigation options ranging from “free range” to tightly controlled, one-question-at-a-time, forward-only progression, all within LearningBuilder’s intuitive, responsive UI. With LearningBuilder’s Assessment Engine, you can devise and deliver a wide variety of formative and summative assessments, including:
- Scored exams that assess user knowledge with scored questions to generate a result.
- Diagnostic self-assessments that capture your users’ perspectives on their current knowledge and skills.
- Reflective self-assessments for users to self-evaluate their competencies.
- Reflective Practice Exercises that guide users through reflection, goal-setting, and activity planning.
LearningBuilder offers several standard item types (multiple choice, short answer, drag and drop, etc.) and the option to enforce a per-question time limit. You can choose to deliver one or multiple questions per page. Depending on how you design your assessments, test takers can:
- Select a single answer
- Select all that apply
- Select “any n out of m” answers
- Select on a Likert scale
With LearningBuilder’s robust assessment tools, you can:
- Provide optional immediate or delayed educational feedback.
- Offer questions with both defined and weighted point values.
- Add media and embed external links.
- Allow users to work across multiple devices, save their progress, and continue where they left off.
- Show test takers the impact of a completed assessment on their program requirements.
- Integrate with a Competency Model for internal mapping and reporting that is not visible to end users.
Do you assess outside the box? We support portfolio assessment-based certification programs. We also empower practical assessments through LearningBuilder’s video capabilities.
Ready for a certification management system that does more? Assess the LearningBuilder difference for yourself! Click here to start the process with a discovery call.
