Certainty-Based Marking: 3 Ways It Can Improve Employee Assessment
Have you ever guessed the answer for a multiple-choice test question and got it right? Of course you have, you fraud. And, if the point of that assessment was just to test your knowledge, then you gamed the system, and came out on top with no blowback – good job! If, however, part of that assessment was to gauge how well prepared you were to move onto the next stage of learning, then I’m sorry to say that the system failed you.
Why is that? Well, by letting you sneak through with a potentially incorrect answer, the assessors using the system have to recognize that some people are fluking some of the answers. This means they’re not adequately knowledgeable and, therefore, not properly prepared to move forward with learning. The repercussions of this are likely minimal, really, but there is a chance that a learner—maybe even you—has subsequently gone through life with a serious deficit in an important area of knowledge. And that’s a problem.
1. Confidence
In short, the problem is that traditional multiple-choice assessment gives learners no way to express their confidence in an answer. Instead, if a learner isn’t sure of an answer, or they don’t know it at all, they are forced to guess – and they have nothing to lose in doing so. If they guess correctly, the assessment says their knowledge is sufficient for them to move on to a new area for learning, even though it’s not.
Certainty-Based Marking overcomes this problem by making learners not only indicate which answer they think is correct, but also how certain they are that their answer is correct. So, for example, a learner might provide a correct answer with an indicated high certainty that they are correct, which would demonstrate that they are sufficiently knowledgeable and confidently so, while a correct or incorrect answer with lower certainty would demonstrate a recognition that further learning is required.
2. Value
A learner providing an incorrect answer with a high certainty of their being correct, meanwhile, is a red flag. This is because the learner’s knowledge is wrong, but they believe it to be correct, and they will go on happily believing that to be the case until they are set straight. As you can imagine, in business, this could be costly, or even downright dangerous. Being able to identify this, meanwhile, could be very, very valuable.
If a bank’s ongoing training procedures were to identify that a trader was convinced that incorrect information was correct, for example, it could save them millions of pounds before any harm was done. For air traffic controllers, or chemical workers, the stakes could be much higher. Certainty-Based Marking safeguards businesses by allowing them to identify incorrect knowledge that employees believe to be correct and address it.
3. Consideration
Certainty-Based Marking doesn’t just help to safeguard businesses, though, it actually helps to improve the overall ability of workforces. The reason for this is that, not only does it give learners an opportunity to indicate their level of certainty accurately, it actively encourages them do so, by giving higher marks for more confident correct answers. For the least confident incorrect answers, you won't be penalised.
For example:
- Correct answer, high certainty: 3 points
- Correct answer, medium certainty: 2 points
- Correct answer, low certainty: 1 points
- Incorrect answer, low certainty: 0 points
- Incorrect answer, medium certainty: -2 points
- Incorrect answer, high certainty: -6 points
This approach prompts learners to consider how reliable their knowledge is, promotes lateral thinking and, as a result, helps them to better understand the underlying issues of a question. Marking is fairer by awarding higher marks to more considered responses, learners are less likely to risk losing marks if they’re uncertain, and careful thinker,s who have not typically been very confident, can gain in confidence.
Ultimately, Certainty-Based Marking means that organizations can be confident that they are getting an accurate reflection of a learner’s knowledge. It allows employees to learn in a more comprehensive and rounded way, making workforces more highly and broadly skilled.
