Designing Effective Training Assessments

What if we designed professional master’s courses the way Netflix writes its seasons? There’s growing interest in using story arcs to structure professional master’s programmes—borrowing narrative techniques to make learning more cohesive, engaging, and authentic. I’ve been experimenting with this in BUSDEV 722, our course on product management. Rather than treating each module as a standalone topic, I’ve been exploring ways to cast the student in the role of a decision-maker navigating the messy, ambiguous world of product innovation. Each module becomes a new chapter in that journey. This creates an integrated, experiential learning arc that mimics the real challenges of building and managing products. BUSDEV 722 is being migrated to a new degree platform—one designed to serve a more diverse cohort, including recent graduates and career changers who may have limited or no experience in product roles. In that context, a strong narrative arc helps learners make sense of unfamiliar concepts by placing them in a story where they can inhabit a role, build confidence through practice, and connect the dots between theory and action. What are the benefits? ✔️ Authenticity: Story arcs create vivid scenarios where students face trade-offs, conflicting priorities, and imperfect data—just like real-world product managers. ✔️Cohesion and confidence: For students without industry experience, a well-designed arc provides a clear path through unfamiliar terrain—scaffolded to support progressive skill development. ✔️Assessment with meaning: Instead of bolted-on tasks, assessments can become pivotal moments in the story. They feel like decisions with consequences, not hoops to jump through. ✔️AI-enabled customisation: With generative AI, it’s now possible to scaffold narrative arcs around individual learner contexts, create branching scenarios, or personalise storylines to match different sectors or goals. Of course, there are trade-offs. ✔️Story arc design is resource-intensive and unfamiliar territory for most educators. ✔️Too rigid an arc can crowd out spontaneous, emergent learning moments. ✔️Not all learners respond to narrative structures in the same way—they must feel real, not artificial. Story arcs are a powerful tool in the reinvention of professional education. In BUSDEV 722, I’m learning that when the arc is strong, the decisions matter, and the learner sees themselves in the story, transformation happens. And thanks to AI, we now have the tools to make this kind of learning design scalable and personalised without sacrificing quality. Have you experimented with narrative design in your teaching? What worked—and what didn’t? #LearningDesign #StoryArc #ProfessionalMasters #HighEducation #LearningJourney

Here’s a harsh truth about assessments: If your exam feels like a trap, it probably is. 😵💫 Most assessment questions aren’t measuring anything—just checking for short-term memory. Learners deserve better. We should write assessments that teach, challenge, and reveal understanding, not confuse people with trick questions or irrelevant trivia. So I made this 👇 Here are eight techniques I use (and teach others) to write better assessment questions: 𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 – “This maps directly to the objective.” Every question should exist because of your learning goals, not despite them. 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗠 – “This feels like the real world.” Why are you testing it if it’s not something they’d do on the job? 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 – “I’m not thrown off by format.” Clear questions = better focus on thinking, not decoding. 𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗭𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 – “I’m not spotting patterns.” No more “C is always right.” Mix it up. 𝗔𝗩𝗢𝗜𝗗 𝗡𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗦 – “I’m not getting tripped up.” Tricky wording ≠ higher difficulty. It just creates confusion. 𝗔𝗩𝗢𝗜𝗗 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗩𝗘 – “I can’t game the system.” They’re lazy distractors. Retire them. 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗢𝗥 𝗤𝗨𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 – “There are just enough options.” More isn’t better. Smarter is better. 𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗪𝗘𝗥 𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗧𝗛𝗦 – “One answer doesn’t stand out.” Stop giving away the correct answer with extra detail. 👇 Save this for your next module. Tag a fellow learning designer who needs this. #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #eLearningDesign #AssessmentDesign #LXD #LearningCulture

📈 Unlocking the True Impact of L&D: Beyond Engagement Metrics 🚀 I am honored to once again be asked by the LinkedIn Talent Blog to weigh in on this important question. To truly measure the impact of learning and development (L&D), we need to go beyond traditional engagement metrics and look at tangible business outcomes. 🌟 Internal Mobility: Track how many employees advance to new roles or get promoted after participating in L&D programs. This shows that our initiatives are effectively preparing talent for future leadership. 📚 Upskilling in Action: Evaluate performance reviews, project outcomes, and the speed at which employees integrate their new knowledge into their work. Practical application is a strong indicator of training’s effectiveness. 🔄 Retention Rates: Compare retention between employees who engage in L&D and those who don’t. A higher retention rate among L&D participants suggests our programs are enhancing job satisfaction and loyalty. 💼 Business Performance: Link L&D to specific business performance indicators like sales growth, customer satisfaction, and innovation rates. Demonstrating a connection between employee development and these outcomes shows the direct value L&D brings to the organization. By focusing on these metrics, we can provide a comprehensive view of how L&D drives business success beyond just engagement. 🌟 🔗 Link to the blog along with insights from other incredible L&D thought leaders (list of thought leaders below): https://lnkd.in/efne_USa What other innovative ways have you found effective in measuring the impact of L&D in your organization? Share your thoughts below! 👇 Laura Hilgers Naphtali Bryant, M.A. Lori Niles-Hofmann Terri Horton, EdD, MBA, MA, SHRM-CP, PHR Christopher Lind

There’s a reason training impact feels so hard to measure. It’s not because impact isn’t there. It’s because we look for it at the wrong time. Training impact doesn’t show up all at once. It unfolds in stages. Right after training, you won’t see behavior change yet. But you can see early signals: Do people understand it? Do they feel confident applying it? Do they see why it matters? These signals don’t prove impact. But they predict whether it’s even possible. A few weeks later, different things become visible: Early application Intent to use Where people get stuck This is where learning starts to show up at work. Months later, real change follows: Behavior shifts Adoption increases New habits form And only much later does it make sense to ask: Did this improve performance? Did it move the business? Was there ROI? Most training is evaluated far too early to see business impact. Good evaluation is about measuring the right things at the right time.

Strategies for AI-Resilient Assessments (AI & Assessments) Over time, through professional development, collaboration, and reflection, I have been exploring what it truly means to design AI-resilient assessments, those that prioritize authentic learning, creativity, and human judgment. Through this exploration, I have identified a set of practical strategies that help ensure assessments remain meaningful and resistant to overreliance on AI tools. Here's a list of these strategies: 💎Case-Based Analysis: Provide students with unique, context-rich scenarios that require them to apply course concepts, analyze data, and propose tailored solutions. 💎Personalized Reflections: Invite students to connect theoretical concepts to their own lived experiences, learning journeys, or local contexts, aspects that AI cannot authentically replicate. 💎Project-Based Assignments: Design multi-step projects that involve planning, iteration, and self-assessment across multiple drafts and revisions. 💎Oral Presentations & Defenses: Require students to explain their reasoning verbally or respond to questions in real time, fostering live, authentic dialogue. 💎Creative Products: Encourage students to produce multimedia, design, or creative outputs, such as prototypes, simulations, or artistic works, to demonstrate their understanding in diverse ways. 💎Collaborative Work: Structure group activities that depend on negotiation, clear role assignment, and peer accountability to achieve shared goals. 💎Portfolios of Work: Ask students to compile portfolios that document their growth over time through reflections, challenges, and learning milestones. 💎Scenario-Based Problem Solving: Present open-ended or ethical dilemmas that require students to synthesize knowledge and engage in creative reasoning. 💎Stepwise Problem Tasks: Require students to show the reasoning or calculations behind each step of their work, rather than only providing the final answer. 💎Peer Teaching Assignments: Have students teach a concept, design instructional materials, or lead short lessons to deepen their understanding and mastery of the subject. And here's the revision added to the list by Heliya Ahmadi a few days later: 💎Futures-Oriented & Speculative Design Assignments: Engage students in future-oriented or speculative thinking exercises that challenge them to imagine emerging scenarios, critically evaluate the evolving role of AI, and explore new forms of agency, authorship, and ethical decision-making. You can find the revised diagram under Heliya's comment in the comment section. 🤓🙏 Reflect & share: How are you rethinking your assessment designs in light of AI’s growing presence in education? #AIinEducation #AssessmentDesign #HigherEdInnovation #InstructionalDesign #TeachingWithAI #AuthenticAssessment #LearningDesign #FacultyDevelopment #EdTech #Pedagogy #AIResilience #FutureOfLearning #EducationInnovation #StudentEngagement #AIandTeaching #DigitalPedagogy

When we actively recall/retrieve information our brains put a little hashtag on it: #useful. And those tags compound with more retrievals. In addition, memories are best strengthened if they are retrieved just before we forget them. This means that the time between retrievals should increase with each one. Furthermore, the fewer cues we are given for recall increases the likelihood of making more associations between new information and prior knowledge. As such, learners can think analogously & apply concepts across contexts. Strategy 1: Use low stakes formative assessments as retrieval practice to enhance memory retention. Strategy 2: Incrementally increase the space between retrieval practice to maximize the effect. Strategy 3: Gradually increase the complexity of retrieval practice using the three types of recall to enhance depth of understanding. 3-4 of these retrieval events will suffice at about 15 minutes per. 🧠 Go for recall over recognition:  Don’t use multiple choice questions as a summative assessment because in the real world they won’t be given a set of options where one is the correct answer. Learners being forced to generate the information is more effective. Free recall is more effective than cued recall and recognition, though it’s prudent for learners to work their way up from recognition to recall. 🔠 Make sure the context and mode of retrieval is varied:  Mix it up. One day they post a video. Next, have them write something. The Later, have them create a diagram or map, etc. Generating information in multiple modes is even more powerful than being presented information in multiple representations. What’s more, this also goes for practicing related information in varying combinations. See Interleaving. 🌉 Make sure retrieval practice is properly scaffolded and elaborative:  Go from concrete to abstract, simple to complex, easy to difficult; from questions to answer to problems to solve. Each retrieval event along the curve should be increasingly more involved to create a Desirable Difficulty. See also Bruner's Spiraling Curriculum & Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory. 💡 Push creation of concrete examples, metaphors, and analogies:  Concrete examples and analogous thinking have a high positive impact on memory. Especially if it is learner-generated. This provides students with the opportunity to put new, abstract concepts in terms of what they already know. It updates their existing schemas. 🔁 Give feedback, and time it right:  If you’re not giving feedback that is corrective and often, your learners might suffer from confusion or even start to develop bad habits. But don’t wait too long to do it. Check out PREP feedback and Quality Matters helpful recommendations. Be sure to fade feedback as student develop mastery. #instructionaldesign #teachingandlearning #retrievalpractice

"I thought I knew this until you asked me to explain it without looking anything up." A colleague shared what one of her students said last week, and I haven't stopped thinking about it. The student had been getting A's all semester. Participating in discussions. Submitting solid work. Then came a 20-minute in-class exercise asking her to work through a novel problem. She couldn't do it. Not because she was unprepared. Because she'd never actually internalized what she thought she understood. Here's the pattern I'm seeing work: professors adding quick, low-stakes assessments that reveal what students actually know versus what they can produce with support. Not high-pressure exams. Not gotcha moments. Reality checks. A biology professor gives 20-minute in-class scenarios. Novel problem, diagram the process, explain your reasoning. Students discover quickly whether they've internalized the pathways or just produced good essays. A history professor does "it's 1848, you're advising a monarch" exercises. Students need events and causation internalized to construct plausible reasoning on the spot. A CS professor has live debugging sessions. Students find out fast whether they actually know data structures or just know how to look them up. These aren't replacing major projects. They're diagnostic. They help students see the difference between accessing information and truly understanding it. And they're surprisingly motivating. Students realize the gaps early, when there's still time to build foundations. They start studying differently. Some knowledge needs to be so internalized it becomes automatic. Not everything. But the core frameworks that let you think in a discipline. When we assess only final deliverables, we lose sight of whether that internalization is happening. These quick checks bring it back into focus. #HigherEducation #AIinEducation #AssessmentDesign Jason Gulya Michelle Kassorla, Ph.D. Mike Kentz Jessica Nguyen Frances Bushnell, MS France Q. Hoang

Empowering Student Agency Through Choice Boards In the Primary Years Programme (PYP), student agency and voice are central to learning. One effective tool that supports agency, differentiation, and inquiry-based learning is the Choice Board. A choice board is a grid of activities aligned with specific learning outcomes that allows students to select the task(s) they find most meaningful or engaging. By offering structured options, choice boards empower learners to take ownership of their learning while still working toward common goals. Why Choice Boards? Choice boards provide a framework that balances student voice and choice with curriculum requirements. They: Encourage students to learn in ways that reflect their interests, readiness, and learning styles. Allow teachers to differentiate tasks without lowering expectations. Foster skills across the Approaches to Learning (ATL) framework, such as thinking, communication, and self-management. Promote agency by giving students responsibility for selecting how they demonstrate their understanding. Linking to Bloom’s Taxonomy In our PYP classrooms, we design choice boards using Bloom’s Taxonomy to ensure tasks range from foundational to higher-order thinking. This ensures that all learners can engage meaningfully, while also challenging them to extend their thinking. For example, in our “Human Body Systems” unit, students may: Remember: Label a diagram of the body. Understand: Explain how the digestive system supports survival. Apply: Keep a food and exercise journal to analyze the impact on body systems. Analyze: Compare two systems to see how they work together. Evaluate: Debate which system is “most important.” Create: Design a superhero with an extra-strong system. Similarly, in our “Role Models” unit, learners reflect on qualities of role models, compare real-life figures, write persuasive pieces, or design their own “Role Model Award Certificate.” In the “Children’s Rights” unit, activities may include analyzing cause-and-effect chains of rights being denied, creating campaigns for awareness, or designing comics of a “Rights Protector” superhero. For younger learners in Grade 1, the “Healthy Lifestyle Choices” choice board includes age-appropriate tasks like sorting healthy vs. unhealthy foods, acting out exercises, or making a “Healthy Hero” poster. Finally, in our “Identities” unit, choice board activities invite students to reflect on their personal and cultural identity, compare changes over time, judge influences such as family and peers, and create artistic representations of “This is Me.” A Step Toward Lifelong Learning By integrating choice boards into our units of inquiry, we not only meet curriculum expectations but also honor the individuality of every child. Students learn that there are many ways to explore ideas and express understanding — a crucial step in nurturing lifelong learners who are reflective, open-minded, and empowered to act.

If you are a teacher or someone who works with teachers, you know that assessment is the topic that keeps coming up in every conversation about AI in education. The discourse tends to focus on students cheating and academic integrity. And those are valid concerns. But students are only part of the equation, maybe even a small part. The biggest piece is assessment design and assessment strategies. The problem, as I argued in a previous guide, is really one of assessment literacy. The old techniques, the standard essays, the recall-heavy exams, the formulaic problem sets, they just don't hold up anymore when students have access to tools that can produce competent work in seconds. We need to rethink how we assess learning. And yes, that requires creativity, experimentation, and a willingness to try new approaches. I know that can push some teachers out of their comfort zone. But unless we do the hard work of redesigning our assessments, we won't be able to evaluate genuine learning. We'll only be measuring a student's ability to prompt an AI. So I put together this guide. I compiled insights from researchers, fellow teachers, and assessment specialists along with practical strategies and tips to help you create assessments that are harder for AI to shortcut. And no, there is no such thing as an AI-proof assessment. AI can now handle just about any traditional assignment you throw at it. But that doesn't mean we're powerless. In this guide, I share frameworks, research findings, and specific strategies that can help you design assessments focused on deeper thinking and understanding. Link in the first comment #AIinEducation #EdTech #AIAssessment #TeacherTools #HigherEd #K12Education #AILiteracy

Not all learning fits on a paper. Therefore, as education evolves, so must assessment. Traditional tests measure recall but they often miss creativity, collaboration and real-world application. In my classroom, I’ve seen the power of non-traditional assessments to unlock deeper learning and student agency. Here are the 4 major types I’ve found most impactful: 📍 Performance-Based Assessments Students show what they know by doing — through speeches, experiments, debates, role plays.etc. These are ideal for building confidence and communication skills. 📍 Project-Based Assessments These showcase growth over time or solve real-world problems. From capstone projects to research portfolios - students reflect, create and innovate. 📍 Reflective Assessments Think learning journals, self-assessment rubric, student-led conferences etc. These foster metacognition, the secret ingredient of independent learning. 📍 Multimodal Assessments Technology becomes a canvas for learning: podcasts, video essays, blogs, animations... These tap into students’ creativity and digital fluency. As we prepare students for a complex world, our assessments should reflect that complexity. What alternative assessments are you using or exploring? #ZippysClassroom #MakeTeachingGreat #EducationMatters #AssessmentForLearning #EdChat #21stCenturySkills #StudentVoice #CreativeLearning