Assessment Design

I just took another trip to OK this past week for the seminar class that I am in where we were working with the Comanche language. Sean and I actually worked a lot together on this past trip designing assessments, as well as some extensive reading material. Although this was for the Comanche language, we actually designed all of our assignments in English to be translated later by a fluent speaker. So, again, this is more of a second language teaching experience, but I still thought it applicable to reflect on it here. (I'm sure Sean will have more to add.)

I found our TESOL classes, both this semester and last, very helpful in the tasks we were given. The language program director had designed a curriculum based on ACTFL (not sure if that's the exact acronym) guidelines and vocabulary themes and then asked Sean and me to design a pre-test and post-test for the first level of curriculum. First of all, it was a very big assignment for someone who knows no Comanche and who is trying to design something that the program director already had in his mind but took a while to articulate clearly. I found Sean and myself asking several clarifying questions, such as: What is the goal of each test? What are your goals with this curriculum? Is this a stand-alone curriculum or is it a classroom supplement? Where will the students be taking these exams? What is being taught in the course of the semester? What is it that you are trying to test?

Sean and I made a plan of attack to go through all of the curriculum, sort it into nouns, verbs, grammar concepts and stock phrases. We then set out to design the pre- and post-test. Throughout the process, we often came back to the idea of "Is this test valid?", "Would the students see it as valid?", and "What is this really testing?" While we did not get to see the final product, I feel like we did give them a good starting point. And, I think it made me even more aware of the questions I should be asking myself as I design assessments.