Controlling Complexity – An Introduction To Question Structure
Last month we completed a distance-based
course, hosted by Julia Lew, through
Skillplan.ca. Below is a bit of background and
thoughts on the course as it related to our
needs at Workplace PEI.
The site:
http://skillplan.ca/English/online_training.ht
m#controllingcomplexity
The What: A session series: 4 sessions, 90
minutes each, once a week.
The Why: Do you ask questions to your
students? Do you grade them? Do you
scaffold them? If yes, take this course!
Why We Wanted Some
Professional Development
At Workplace a core component of our support for learners is performing asset-based assessments to
identify areas of strength and weakness as it relates to the essential skills and their chosen profession or
trade. A typical assessment for a carpenter, for example, would contain sections on technical reading,
document use, numeracy (math), computer use, etc. The basic structure is designed to be
contextualized for the learner and also provide us and them with feedback on any areas that may be
impeding their potential to work effectively in their field (as it relates to essential skills). Likewise, we
work with many trades people to assist them in passing their certification exams (Red Seal), for example.
There’s been many a debate on the necessity and structure of our assessments. How we design
questions, how we control how difficult or complex a section of reading or question is has always
challenged us. Ultimately we want to feel confident in the assessment we deliver will be effective for the
individual and produce the results they are looking for.
The Need
How do you know you are effectively scaffolding your learners? What does scaffold mean?? Are your
questions too easy, too hard, just right? How would you know? What taxonomy can be used to measure
this? How can we control the complexity of a question? Aren’t all questions supposed to be hard? Why
were some teacher’s tests easier than others? To be honest, even though I worked with assessments
both at the K-12 and Adult Education level I had little insight into these questions.
The 4 Dials
Throughout our course we were actively involved constructing questions based on the 4 dials of
question complexity. Essentially, there are components to every question and by adjusting the
complexity (easy to difficult) of each question you can control the complexity. Each of the 4 dials can
control the level of difficulty of any given question. Likewise, by understanding what an easy - >
moderate -> difficult question is you can effectively scaffold your learners into higher learning/concepts.
Think you know it already? According to research my Mosenthal and Hardt (authors and researchers of
this material) only 18% of teachers could identify, of their own personal questions, what an easy or
difficult question was. Most people ask either the easy or difficult types of questions.
The 3D scaffold
Probably the most interesting part of the course was the last piece of homework we had to (it only took
an hour). We took our set of 10 questions that we developed on our given subject and then placed them
into the 3D “Mosenthal Taxonomy.” It was at that moment that I realized my learners weren’t being
scaffolded effectively since I was missing “moderate level” questions. According to Julia this is very
common, though. Phew!
In a nutshell, this course is extremely underpriced and offers an immense opportunity to evaluate your
ability to assess, write tests/exams, and more importantly scaffold learners throughout their learning.
The course is delivered through a distance delivery format (Cisco WebEx). The whole process was fun,
engaging, and extremely beneficial to our course business of working within the context of essential
skills and our learners.