Abstract:

This paper examines one private education provider’s reflections on assessment design, for adult learners returning to education to make a career change, and putting their needs firmly at the centre of the assessment provision, increasing the likelihood of them securing a job in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

The ideal assessment would balance the academic requirements of confirming their knowledge of the course materials, whilst also including much of the technical details that an experienced employee would have loved to have known back on day-1 when they were starting their career.

This private education provider has 10-years experience in designing academic assessments that can also support likely technical job interview questions. Course assessments built into a portfolio of work for the adult learners to confirm their technical capabilities, can be presented at job interviews. Once the technical box is ticked at interviews, this allows discussions to move onto the equally important areas of company culture, and team dynamics, and increases the adult learner's likelihood of securing a job in their new industry as quickly as possible.

Over the last 3-years, 400 adult learners have taken these programmes, and their specifically designed assessments. The data from this group will be analysed using the analytical lens and theoretical framework of Behavioural Science, in particular Bounded Rationality and Dual-System Planner-Doer Models.

This paper is broadly practitioner research using case studies as illustrative of real-world phenomena. The methodology for comparison draws heavily on Bereday’s model of comparative styles and their predispositions (Bereday, 1964)

Key findings from this paper include:
- Assessments need to be both relevant to assessing understanding of the course materials, as well as being of benefit in an interview situation to help the adult learner to get the job they want
- For adult learners, the best assignments are those which can be built into a portfolio to showcase their capabilities to potential employers during a job interview
- Assessments need to help adult learners engage in informed discussions about the industry in general (and the company they are applying to in particular) during a job interview.
- Strong answers to key technical questions and the opportunity to demonstrate practical problem-solving abilities to an interviewer, allows an interview to quickly move onto company culture and team dynamics discussions, to the benefit of the adult learner.

Keywords:

Online Learning, Online Assessment, Plagiarism, Adult Learners, Best Practice, Designing Assessments.