3. Creating Measures/ Success Bar

Education is a Slippery Fish

Be proactive in communicating with all stakeholders about how you will measure the success of your training or program or activity. Clearly articulate what skills you are targeting and define clear actions that participants would take to showcase their new skills.

What Will they Be Able to Do... that they couldn't do before your training?

Problem:

For example, Let's say you have a rough vision around Values: "Learners will be able to appreciate social entrepreneurship" or a rough vision around Attitudes: "Learners will be able to have a savings culture". Since you cannot jump into someone's heart and mind to see if "savings culture" is in there, how will you know if you achieved this vision after the training? How do you measure "appreciation"? How will you see if X student achieved "savings culture" but Y student did not?

Solution

Challenges as Practical Assessment!!

Create a practical challenge in line with the targeted skill. Challenges are a great assessment tool and activity. They allow the facilitator to guide and support instead of instruct the learners. Challenges, if designed well, can also be highly motivating for students.

For example, on "savings culture", create a term-long savings challenge where each week learners save money in a box. For "appreciating social entrepreneurship", create a challenge where learners have to change existing businesses plans into social enterprise plans.

Why does this matter for writing objectives?

GO BACK AND CHANGE YOUR ROUGH VISION INTO YOUR CHALLENGE OBJECTIVE

"Learners will be able to save at least 3/8 weeks in a term"

"Learners will be able to change business plans into social enterprise plans"

How to Plan For Clear & Measurable Success Bar

Example: Below is a planning table for a training of new Program Officers in Kenya. This is made BEFORE a detailed schedule is made to finalize on objectives and measurable actions that would be used to evaluate whether the objective has been achieved. Some of the actions below are tasks (such as portfolio assignments to be done as homework) and some are activities to be done during the training (such as role plays).

What do you notice from this planning tool?

Hint: The table helps to see if everything is perfectly aligned.

Is it actually a new Skill?

You can judge if your rough vision will lead to a skill or not by first asking yourself "Could they do this even if there was no training?" For example, developing a "savings culture", why do you think they don't already know how to save? Is it a knowledge problem? The second question to ask is: "Am I trying to improve their ability to do something they already know how to do?" If so, you would want to make a little rubric (even if you only think about it and never write it down).. A rubric allows you to make a clear vision for what "improvement" of an existing skill looks like. This can help you to ensure your training doesn't simply stop at orientation but pushes trainees up to higher skill levels. A rubric has levels of quality "such as: limited, adequate, proficient, and exemplary" that you use to rate performance on each objective.

How do you make a rubric?


Asssessment Criteria & Rubrics.pdf

Assessment #3:

  • Design an evaluation rubric that you or someone else could actually use!
  • Submit your rubric and explanation of who would use it and how s/he would use it. Submit to designacademy@experienceeducate.org