Assessing Competencies (II)

Now what happens when you are conducting competency based learning for a group of individuals who are very experienced and have met most of the basic requirements in the business?

More often than not, corporate trainers do not start from ground zero. They are engaged so as to bring a group of individuals to a new level of experience or to reinforce fundamental values. Now the issue is not simply PASS/FAIL or COMPETENT/NOT YET COMPETENT. It is an issue of how competent or to what degree is the individual competent relative to each other.

In such an instance, a preferred method of assessment is Non-Referenced Measurement or simply "Ranking". Like grading, Non-referenced Measurement still requires an accurate set of performance criteria to be laid out. It forms the base line for the assessment and evidence gathering. But it requires the assessor to go one step further. This additional step is to assign "values" to each grade and then to tabulate the values to determine a ranking order.


Example:

The top 10% of participant gets “A” (Value = 4)

The next 20% of participants get “B” (Value = 3)

The next 30% of participants get “C” (Value = 2)

The next 40% of participants get “D” (Value = 1)

A point to note about Non-Referenced Measurement is that it should be used only when the situation permits. A downside to ranking is the potential impact it has on individuals, especially when there are of very high seniority. An assessor has to make a judgment call as to how to turn it into a constructive tool rather than to lead the group into a destructive mode. Still it is a useful alternative to Criterion-Referenced Measurement.