Concluding your Program with Assessment and Summary

Creating an Effective End-Of-Program Test

So, the final part of your curriculum should summarize the key learning points covered and test that your learners have achieved the objectives, whether this be a recollection of knowledge or demonstration of applying a new skill. 

Quiz activities posed throughout the learning content are used to build or reinforce learning. You provide the learner with feedback which helps them to improve their skills further.

However, an end of program test fulfils a different purpose, which is to assess learning progress.

The type of test that you create will depend on the nature of your learning objectives, i.e. whether your learners will be recalling knowledge or demonstrating the application of a new skill. As mentioned previously, quiz activities are best suited to test recollection of knowledge, whereas form activities are a better way for a learner to demonstrate a new skill as through here they can upload evidence in the form of a video, audio or image.

Whilst quiz activities can be used for automatic assessment through the setting of a pass mark, you can use a form activity to set something up that requires later evaluation from people in the Performance Hub. You might do this if the assessment requires a demonstration of skills that cannot be easily judged as correct or incorrect. 

When creating an end of program test, ask yourself each of these questions:

• Have you created a valid test?
• Have you tested all of the program objectives?
• Did you fully test the objectives?
• What support is the learner receiving?
• Did the test accurately reflect a situation a learner might encounter?
• What pass mark is acceptable? How critical is it that the learner demonstrates 100% competence (e.g. safety critical training might require a higher pass rate)
• Is a pass mark necessary? 
• What continuing development are you expecting of the learner? Is this reflected in the test questions and pass mark you’ve set?

An end of program assessment isn't usually the end of the story, though, particularly where complex skills are learned. Further development will consolidate knowledge and help with the application of these skills. 

Summarizing the Key Points

At the end of the curriculum, a summary is a useful end-point. It consolidates what’s been learnt. It also provides a useful go-to point for a learner who needs a quick reminder of the main learning areas.

Your summary should include a recap of your objectives. It’s also worth reminding your learner at this point of the personal benefits they will receive now they’ve completed this program. It reinforces the importance of what’s been learnt and provides motivation to apply their new knowledge or skills.

Time spent getting your objectives spot on is such a good investment; please don't skip on this first part of the process!

In our previous articles, we walked you through a 6 step process for building your curriculum:

1. Your first challenge is to select all and only the content you need to fulfil your different learning objectives
2. Content must then be ordered so that the learner perceives there to be a usable, memorable or natural flow to the materials
3. We then recommend building a curriculum "skeleton" with sections, steps containing dummy activities
4. You will spend most of your time building and revising learning activities
5. Importantly, you should consider making some of these activities "touchpoints", not too many, not too few
6. Lastly, include where appropriate points to other resources outside the confines of your online curriculum, depending on the composition of your Performance Hub

This final area talked about the importance of the test and how important it is to ensure that the equilateral triangle is closed, as it were - that everything is balanced, i.e. each objective has its supporting learning content and resources and each is properly assessed.

We hope you've enjoyed and benefited from the advice and guidance given. By following it, your learners should have a much more efficient and effective learning experience.

Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!