High-Stakes Assessments in Online Competency-Based Higher Education

Abstract

Assessment is the cornerstone of competency-based higher education because the outcome of the assessment ultimately determines whether the student has demonstrated competence in a job-related skill and is thus able to advance in one's career. As a result, the assessment development process must be sufficiently thorough and data-driven to produce high quality assessments. To address concerns and changes in higher education, a multi-stage, longitudinal assessment development cycle is proposed. In Stage 1, assessment specifications and design are established. Stage 2 culminates in the building of assessment forms and standard setting. Stage 3 involves administration and scoring of assessments. Stage 4 focuses on evaluating the validity of assessments via several assessment quality indicators (AQIs). Finally, these stages repeat over time due to a variety of factors such as aberrations in the AQI metrics and the results of large-scale validity studies, resulting in continuous quality improvement of assessments.