Thanks to the help of librarians from throughout southern California, we made a big step forward with test modules 1 and 2 this summer. Because TATIL is a criterion referenced test (rather than a norm referenced test like SAILS) we rely on the expertise of librarians and other educators to set performance standards so that we can report more than a raw score when students take the test. By setting standards, we can make and test claims about what students’ scores indicate about their exposure to and mastery of information literacy. This standard setting process is iterative and will continue throughout the life of the test. By completing the first step in that ongoing effort, we now have two module result reports that provide constructive feedback to students and educators.
Standard setting plays an important role in enhancing the quality of the test. For more detailed information about the standard setting method like the one we used, I recommend these slides from the Oregon Department of Education. The essence of this approach to standard setting is that we used students’ responses from the first round of field testing to calculate the difficulty of each test item. Then the test items were printed out in the order of how difficult they were for students. Expert panelists went through these item sets, using their knowledge of student learning to identify points in the continuum of items where the knowledge or ability required to correctly answer the questions seemed to cross a threshold. These thresholds indicate the boundary between beginning students, intermediate students, and expert students’ performance. We then used the difficulty levels of the items at the thresholds to calculate the cut scores.
...continue reading "September Update: Our Standard Setting Process"