Transcript
Video duration: 0:55
Students often face tough questions on assessments, even low stakes assessments.
Yet giving them the choice to acknowledge
when they're uncertain, rather than forcing a guess,
might actually improve the assessment of what they know and can do.
At the same time,
such choice can also complicate how these types of responses are scored.
In our study, we found that by treating, "I don't know," response options as neutral
or midpoint responses on a likert type scale and counting the a number of instances,
we were more likely to get a better and more valid estimate of students' prior knowledge
and therefore also a clearer picture of what students actually know.
Our study could potentially open doors
towards better assessment methods that are tailored to measuring learning,
particularly when students might possess different levels of background knowledge
on a particular topic that's being assessed, which is an issue that often
occurs on performance or scenario based assessments.