#prior-learning assessment

[weldonchris-blog]

Getting Smarter on Skills Testing

The big enchilada of potential disruptions to higher education is if employers go outside of the academy to size up job seekers. While that prospect remains fanciful, for now, new approaches to skills assessment show what the future could look like.

Take Smarterer, a Boston-based start-up that offers 800 free online tests for people to prove their chops in areas ranging from C++ programming to speaking English for business or understanding Gothic architecture. And not all the assessments are about getting a job -- there are quizzes on punk rock history and how to use Twitter.

Smarterer's tests are crowdsourced, Wikipedia-style, and users can get a meaningful score by answering fewer than 20 questions, company officials said. That means they can tout a skill on their Smarterer profile after spending as little as one minute taking a test.

Jennifer Fremont-Smith, Smarterer’s CEO, describes the company as a “third-party, super powerful assessment and credentialing tool.” Its goal is not to replace the college degree, which Fremont-Smith acknowledges is currently the gold standard of credentials, but to give employers an additional way to sort through job applicants.

“Our big vision is to be the global standard of skills measurement,” she said.

Smarterer joins several other relatively new attempts to offer job seekers a way to demonstrate what they can do through testing. Rival companies like Skills.to and Degreed attempt to assess skills and learning. And the ACT's National Career Readiness Certificate measures employability with tests on applied mathematics, locating information and reading for information. The certificate is geared for entry-level jobs, even for applicants who lack a college credential.

On the other side of the spectrum, Bloomberg in 2010 introduced an assessment aimed at students who want to bulk up their C.V.s to land jobs in finance. The test covers 11 fairly narrow categories, like investment banking and analyzing financial statements.

Smarterer uses adaptive scoring to measure what people can do. The approach is based on the Glicko rating system, which chess players use to signify where they stack up.

Under the Glicko system, a chess player has a ranking between 0 and 2,400. Each game played affects the ranking, and weight is given to an opponent’s ranking. For example, an 800 player gets a lot of points for beating someone with a 1,400 ranking, and fewer for beating a 700 player. And a loss to someone with a lower ranking is a big hit.

Likewise, Smarterer’s assessments weigh questions based on a test-taker’s previous results. And people can return over time, continuously reassessing and benchmarking their skills as they learn more. Users get tags like "proficient" and "expert" along the way. Only 2.5 percent of test-takers in any topic make it to "master" level.

The company also draws strength from the crowd, by adjusting questions based on feedback. 

Read more.

[weldonchris-blog]

Another Push on Prior Learning

Like community colleges and regional public universities, a growing number of private colleges have ramped up their experiments with the big three disruptions: competency-based learning, prior-learning assessment and fledgling attempts to issue credit for MOOCs.

The latest, the College of St. Scholastica, a Roman Catholic institution located in Duluth, Minn., is piloting a hands-on approach to granting credit for learning gained outside the classroom, including through massive open online classes (MOOCs). The new degree-completion program is aimed at students who hold some college credit but have failed to earn a degree – some 40 million Americans. Every adult student in the program at St. Scholastica will be assigned a faculty member or staff counselor who will serve as a “completion coach” to help them along the way.

College officials said they will count up to 96 credits from elsewhere toward a bachelor's degree. Those credits could include transfer credits earned at a community college or other four-year institution. But they could also be credits students earn by proving their prior learning through a portfolio -- a detailed record of that learning -- or by passing tailored tests or commonly used examinations. Students must earn a minimum of 32 credits from St. Scholastica, with some of those credits counting toward general education and major requirements.

... the college is taking a thoughtful, faculty-led approach to determining its still-evolving stance on prior-learning assessment. For example, he said faculty members were considering how, and if, tests could be designed to measure learning in MOOCs. And they are working on how to incorporate portfolio-based methods, as well as the possibility of using oral exams to get “inside the student’s heads.”

One key for the prior-learning assessment push to take off at St. Scholastica is its price point. Most adult students are unlikely to be attracted by a full sticker price of $30,000 in tuition and fees. But with prior-learning credits, a bachelor’s degree could cost as little as $25,000, according to the college.

Read more.

[weldonchris-blog]

Getting Smarter on Skills Testing

The big enchilada of potential disruptions to higher education is if employers go outside of the academy to size up job seekers. While that prospect remains fanciful, for now, new approaches to skills assessment show what the future could look like.

Take Smarterer, a Boston-based start-up that offers 800 free online tests for people to prove their chops in areas ranging from C++ programming to speaking English for business or understanding Gothic architecture. And not all the assessments are about getting a job -- there are quizzes on punk rock history and how to use Twitter.

Smarterer's tests are crowdsourced, Wikipedia-style, and users can get a meaningful score by answering fewer than 20 questions, company officials said. That means they can tout a skill on their Smarterer profile after spending as little as one minute taking a test.

Jennifer Fremont-Smith, Smarterer’s CEO, describes the company as a “third-party, super powerful assessment and credentialing tool.” Its goal is not to replace the college degree, which Fremont-Smith acknowledges is currently the gold standard of credentials, but to give employers an additional way to sort through job applicants.

“Our big vision is to be the global standard of skills measurement,” she said.

Smarterer joins several other relatively new attempts to offer job seekers a way to demonstrate what they can do through testing. Rival companies like Skills.to and Degreed attempt to assess skills and learning. And the ACT's National Career Readiness Certificate measures employability with tests on applied mathematics, locating information and reading for information. The certificate is geared for entry-level jobs, even for applicants who lack a college credential.

On the other side of the spectrum, Bloomberg in 2010 introduced an assessment aimed at students who want to bulk up their C.V.s to land jobs in finance. The test covers 11 fairly narrow categories, like investment banking and analyzing financial statements.

Smarterer uses adaptive scoring to measure what people can do. The approach is based on the Glicko rating system, which chess players use to signify where they stack up.

Under the Glicko system, a chess player has a ranking between 0 and 2,400. Each game played affects the ranking, and weight is given to an opponent’s ranking. For example, an 800 player gets a lot of points for beating someone with a 1,400 ranking, and fewer for beating a 700 player. And a loss to someone with a lower ranking is a big hit.

Likewise, Smarterer’s assessments weigh questions based on a test-taker’s previous results. And people can return over time, continuously reassessing and benchmarking their skills as they learn more. Users get tags like "proficient" and "expert" along the way. Only 2.5 percent of test-takers in any topic make it to "master" level.

The company also draws strength from the crowd, by adjusting questions based on feedback. 

Read more.

[weldonchris-blog]

Another Push on Prior Learning

Like community colleges and regional public universities, a growing number of private colleges have ramped up their experiments with the big three disruptions: competency-based learning, prior-learning assessment and fledgling attempts to issue credit for MOOCs.

The latest, the College of St. Scholastica, a Roman Catholic institution located in Duluth, Minn., is piloting a hands-on approach to granting credit for learning gained outside the classroom, including through massive open online classes (MOOCs). The new degree-completion program is aimed at students who hold some college credit but have failed to earn a degree – some 40 million Americans. Every adult student in the program at St. Scholastica will be assigned a faculty member or staff counselor who will serve as a “completion coach” to help them along the way.

College officials said they will count up to 96 credits from elsewhere toward a bachelor's degree. Those credits could include transfer credits earned at a community college or other four-year institution. But they could also be credits students earn by proving their prior learning through a portfolio -- a detailed record of that learning -- or by passing tailored tests or commonly used examinations. Students must earn a minimum of 32 credits from St. Scholastica, with some of those credits counting toward general education and major requirements.

... the college is taking a thoughtful, faculty-led approach to determining its still-evolving stance on prior-learning assessment. For example, he said faculty members were considering how, and if, tests could be designed to measure learning in MOOCs. And they are working on how to incorporate portfolio-based methods, as well as the possibility of using oral exams to get “inside the student’s heads.”

One key for the prior-learning assessment push to take off at St. Scholastica is its price point. Most adult students are unlikely to be attracted by a full sticker price of $30,000 in tuition and fees. But with prior-learning credits, a bachelor’s degree could cost as little as $25,000, according to the college.

Read more.