What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Completion Style And Essay Formatted Constructed-Response Assessments?

A Constructed-Response assessment means what is implies, that eLearners must construct a response to a question as opposed to choose a response such as the case in multiple choice, T/F and matching tests. The following two sections describe two types of Constructed-Response assessments along with their advantages and disadvantages and grading criteria. 

Completion Assessments 

Advantages: 

1. The eLearner supplies the answer or solves a problem which signifies true knowledge or comprehension of the concept.

2. Completion questions are relatively easy to construct and do not require detailed scoring.

3. Completion type tests can include an adequate sampling of content material which is therefore likely to have more validity. 

Disadvantages:

1. Your assessment measures are restricted to your eLearner's recall of information. 

2. There is a possibility of more errors in scoring especially if using software that is somewhat restrictive.

When making and grading these type assessments and using the performance objectives as a guide in doing so, eTeachers need to make sure that the completion items include the following components or criteria: They must be...

• Designed to measure specific skills 
• Designed to read below an eLearner's ability level
• Designed so that the blank word is a "Key" word
• Designed so that the blank word or words are on the end or close to the end of the sentence
• Designed so that the number of blanks are limited

Sample Completion Question:
The type of assessments that require eLearners to fill-in-the-blank are called _________________ assessments.

Reference: (Oosterhof, Conrad, Ely, 2008)  

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Essay Question Assessments 

Advantages:

1. Measures more directly the behaviors specific to the instructional objectives. 

2. eLearner's ideas are communicated in writing to demonstrate actual knowledge and comprehension of material as opposed to mere memorization. 

3. eLearner's can explain their logic and reasoning.

Disadvantages:

1. There is less adequate sampling of the content being tested.

2. Scoring runs the risk of being less reliable do to subjectivity. 

3. Essay questions take longer to score although developing and using rubrics can help. 

When making and grading these type assessments and using the performance objectives as a guide in doing so, eTeachers need to make sure that the completion items include the following components or criteria: They must be...

• Designed to measure specific skills
• Designed to read below an eLearner's ability level
• Designed to be able to answer in less than 10 minutes
• Designed so that scoring will be is relatively the same regardless of how many different readers are scoring it
• Designed so that the scoring plan is obvious and understandable to eLearners 

Sample Essay Question:
Explain how a blog is helpful in educating others of the same profession.

Reference: (Oosterhof, Conrad, Ely, 2008)