When hiring top talent and making sure employees are qualified and certified, you need to be sure they're on top of their game. But how can you make sure they have the right stuff? In today’s world, it’s more important than ever to be able to quickly and efficiently assess knowledge, competency and skill - and yet some businesses are still relying on archaic tools, processes and systems to perform this vital task.
When you don’t have the right tools for the job, you can expect errors, delays and inconsistent and misleading results which, needless to say, can turn small problems into big ones.
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry - these days, businesses like yours are getting their hands on digital assessment platforms to take the headaches out of assessment. As well as providing a central hub for your testing, these clever platforms can simplify the entire process and make it more efficient through managing everything from test development to analytics; all while keeping your data safe within a cloud-based domain.
Assess is a platform that does what it says on the tin - specifically helping to untangle complex testing requirements while zeroing in on psychometrics and automating processes. This platform takes the strain by helping to minimise manual workloads and improving the accuracy of your data with speed and efficiency, giving you real time insights for better, faster and smarter decision making.
Streamlining Complex Testing Workflows
If you’re thinking that assessments are just about writing and delivering questions, think again. In today’s world, administrators need to be able to juggle a number of factors including item banks, different formats for delivering, logic scoring systems, data protection and, of course, that all important compliance when it comes to rules and regulations. When rolling all of this out across old school systems and spreadsheets, you lose efficiency and scaling can be difficult if not downright impossible.
Digital platforms offer an affordable solution by rounding up all of the different assessment lifecycle elements and tucking them away in one secure central hub. This allows your teams to develop questions and organise them within a safe item bank which is loaded up with metadata along with tracking and tagging features. As well as making your test assembly more accurate and consistent, it also makes it more strategic as, unlike doddery old manual systems, this tech allows you to follow psychometric blueprints and guides to make sure that your tests are balanced, consistent and, most importantly, fair by reducing human bias. Employees can also quickly and easily reuse or update content, saving even more time and hassle.
As if all of that isn’t enough, you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to the ways in which you can deliver your tests as options include face to face, online or even remote proctoring - all within just a few taps of a screen. Unlike manual processes, these platforms also make light work of language and accessibility requirements, making them an inclusive choice as well as a smart one.
Elevating Assessment Quality Through Psychometrics
Where digital assessment platforms really shine is the bit where they’re able to inject psychometric principles into the process - from development all the way through to analysis. As you may have already discovered for yourself, without advanced tools like these, it’s pretty tricky to tell if your assessment is reliable or even properly valid.
Digital tools can also help to make your assessments bulletproof through the introduction and integration of models like
CTT and IRT which make it easy to assess difficulty and bias while using proper data to look at reliability. This flexible system allows you to quickly identify and replace your weakest links and boost the stronger ones for exams and assessments that do the job they’re supposed to. You can also get onboard with better fairness testing and more consistent and comprehensive scores; even if the content changes or evolves. While pre-testing tools keep your content fresh without impacting on scores, real-time analytics get busy with handing over access to valuable data with full visibility of long and short-term performance and over numerous populations; thereby supporting alignment with goals and learning and offering better decision making.
Reducing Manual Workload Through Automation
If you’re still spending hours and hours trudging through manual tasks required by old school testing systems, you’re effectively throwing time and money down the drain while tracking subjects, assessing results and churning out reports - all of which can be taken off your hands by digital automation tools. These platforms get all this done for you - and much faster than a mere human can manage. For example; following completion of a test, your digital pal can immediately assign a score and whip out a report highlighting the highs and lows with comprehensive breakdowns for laser targeted follow ups.
A lot of modern platforms are able to easily integrate with your existing tech such as Human Resources and Learning Management to streamline processes through departments while limiting mistakes and duplication. They can also offer better management of candidates by doing away with manual eligibility and participation factors. With these tools, all progress is managed within a central dashboard which allows you to complete all of your day to day tasks including scheduling, re-attempts and reminders without any fuss.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also reiterate that these tools can be invaluable in making sure that you remain compliant by monitoring and enforcing policies and providing reports to make sure that you’re covered from all angles.
Turning Data Into Strategic Insights
In the olden days, assessment was an “either you got it or you don’t” type deal but, thankfully, those days are gone. Today, this is more about ongoing learning, developing and evolving skills and knowledge ... and "techy tools" do this so much better than us humans, allowing for more intelligent insights which lend themselves to improved decision making.
Benchmarking features and rock star analytics make it easy to assess, compare and share results and performances to understand progress, align with regulatory standards and spot and fix knowledge gaps. Most industries can benefit from these tools but they are particularly valuable for sectors such as medical and healthcare where skill requirements move at lightning speed - and ongoing validation is not optional.
Conclusion
In the modern world, organisations can no longer afford to be complacent when it comes to managing and evaluating tests - which means that, for most, the future is definitely digital. Complicated workflows, best practices and critical functions are all things that have very little wiggle room in terms of accuracy and so getting onboard an assessment platform is an investment that will deliver error-proof efficiency with next level reporting and analytics; allowing professionals to hire, certify and educate candidates more effectively for long term success.
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