Designing competence assessment in VET for a digital future

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the design, implementation, and evaluation of a technology-based assessment (TBA) measuring trainee competencies in the field of economics. Current research on “Industry 4.0" or “digital natives” demonstrates how quickly technological advances change the working world and how important information and communications (ICT) skills already are in the workplace. Digitalization not only entails new requirements for working but also has far-reaching implications for vocational learning and vocational educational design. In line with the idea of triadic assessment (Pellegrino (2012) The design of an assessment system focused on student achievement: A learning sciences perspective on issues of competence, growth and measurement. In: Bernholt, Neumann and Nentwig (eds) Making it tangible. Learning outcomes in science education. Waxmann, Münster, pp 79-107; Pellegrino et al., (2003) Knowing what students know: the science and design of educational assessment. National Academy Press, Washington, DC), this leads to a growing need for appropriate assessments to be aligned with curriculum and instruction. Hence, we introduce an instrument that aims to bridge the gap between work reality and assessment, using a prototype of an authentic workplace simulation. More specifically, this technology-based tool visualizes work and business processes in an industrial enterprise and requires test-takers to act and make decisions in computer-based tasks (e.g., editing text files and tables, answering emails, or dealing with daily test statistics). In order to reflect digitalized workplace processes, technological aspects of real work environments must be didactically modeled and installed as usable features. Thus, the usability of the installed features is crucial, as technical authenticity constitutes a basic requirement of valid assessment. For the purpose of testing the usability of this simulation, a think-aloud study of the user interface was conducted with a total of N = 37 business education students.