Worst Assessment

Thinking about my worst assessment was easy because my mind kept going back to late 2008 when I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). This is by far my worst assessment, partly because it was on a Scantron and partly because I had to wait for the proctor to finish telling a few long-winded war stories before we could even start. It was a 149-minute test that was timed by section, and we couldn't continue until everyone finished a section or the time ran out. While I scored well enough to get my pick of available Military Occupational Specialties (MOS), it felt like it took days as I sat there answering questions or staring out the window. We weren't allowed to look at each other because of the perception of cheating, and we couldn't sleep either. By the end of the test, I wasn't putting much thought into some of my answers. I just wanted to finish so I could get back to staring at absolutely nothing.

Looking back, I understand why the military uses standardization. The ASVAB helps determine which occupations someone qualifies for, making it a high-stakes assessment. Having consistent questions, timing, and scoring makes sense when comparing thousands of applicants. However, I question whether treating everyone exactly the same necessarily makes an assessment fair.

Montenegro and Jankowski (2017) discuss how assessing everyone in the same way does not necessarily make an assessment equitable (pp. 5–6). Everyone in that room had the same rules, but that doesn't mean those rules affected everyone equally. Some people can sit for hours without losing focus, while others struggle with it. I think this is where bias can come into play, not necessarily from the questions or scoring, but from the testing process itself. If the conditions affect people's ability to demonstrate what they know, are we really comparing them fairly?

This also makes me question the validity of the results. I started the test wanting to do my best, but by the end I was more interested in being done than getting the questions right. Was the test still measuring my aptitude, or was it measuring how long I could endure sitting there before mentally checking out? I can't say how much it affected my score, especially since I did well, but I know it affected how seriously I approached some of the questions.

As an instructor, I think about how easily we can confuse completing an assessment with demonstrating learning. The University of Central Florida's Bloom's Taxonomy resource distinguishes between remembering information and applying it (University of Central Florida, n.d.). If I'm teaching students JavaScript, having them actually build something with it tells me a lot more than having them memorize definitions. There needs to be a reason behind what I'm assessing and how I'm assessing it, just as there needs to be a reason for what they're learning in the first place. If students understand the material but the assessment itself gets in the way of demonstrating that understanding, maybe it's the assessment that needs to change.

References

Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2017). Equity and assessment: Moving towards culturally responsive assessment (Occasional Paper No. 29). National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment. https://www.utica.edu/academic/Assessment/new/OccasionalPaper29culturally%20responsive%20assessment.pdf

University of Central Florida, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Bloom's taxonomy. https://fctl.ucf.edu/teaching-resources/course-design/blooms-taxonomy/

My Worst Assessment: The ASVAB