Tests

A Test is an activity designed specifically to demonstrate mastery of a Task or Topic.

Tests are the hard part of training -- for the instructors as well as the students. A perfect Test would be one single activity that requires the integrated use of all the Topics and Tasks learned in the study of a Tutorial. "Perform a successful heart transplant" would be one such Test. "Drive this 18-wheel tractor-trailer from downtown Boston to Kansas City" is another. More typical, however, are a series of minor Tests during a Tutorial to establish the students' incremental improvement and enlargement of skillset before actually slicing into the patient's chest.

Tests in WBT usually employ such well-know techniques as:

• True-false questions
• Multiple-choice questions
• Matching exercises
• Selecting and sorting (classifying) tasks
• Recitation of rote learning
• Identification of problems or faulty constructs (arrangements, relationships, syntax, grammar, etc.)
• Correction of identified or given problems
• Sentence-completion
• Problem-solving
• Information retrieval (open-book or info-access tests)
• Demonstration of skill before a coach or judge
• Any number of devious, tortuous exam methods invented by teachers down through the millennia.

A Test is as much a measure of the capability of the instructional design as it is of the skills of the student. Think, for a moment, about a student passing a Test on a faulty Tutorial, or capable students failing a Test that requires untaught skills. Designing a good Test is the final Test of the instructor's mastery of the whole instructional process.