Why test: To Assess the Effectiveness of Training

A Wind Tunnel for Skills

In 1901 the Wright brothers left Kitty Hawk in despair. Their kites crashed. They couldn't control them. And the kites didn't have enough lift to carry a man a substantial distance, let alone a man and a motor.

A short two years later, they flew!

What happened in the intervening years?

The Wrights built a simple wind tunnel – the first to be used to measure lift. With it they could control the direction and the speed of the wind. In the controlled measurement conditions of the wind tunnel, they experimented with over 100 miniature wing shapes and found the best curvature and aspect ratio for their wings.

Armed with these results, they dramatically redesigned their wings and in 1902 returned to Kitty Hawk with a glider that soared gracefully. To achieve manned flight a year later, they enlarged the glider slightly and added a motor and propeller.

The wind tunnel was the key to the Wright brothers achieving manned flight.

For almost 80 years we’ve tried to use multiple choice tests to measure learning. Like the erratic, gusty winds of Kitty Hawk, multiple choice items are subject to many extraneous factors that can confound efforts to measure well. Factors like:

General intelligence
Vocabulary level
Cheating
Logical elimination and
Luck

It’s time we created a wind tunnel for learning – one that will remove our training treatments from the vicissitudes of multiple guess testing. By creating tests that:

Eliminate guessing
Eradicate the possibility of logical elimination
Provide environments that require the demonstration of actual skills
Require low vocabulary, and
Minimize the role of general intelligence

we can begin to fathom the true factors that underlie learning.

Without a wind tunnel for learning, we cannot achieve success at analyzing the components of learning… we will be left to the erratic success of classrooms, multiple choice tests, and a plethora of variables we cannot measure.

With a performance wind tunnel for training, who knows the limits of what can be achieved?

Why Performance Test?

To Measure Intellectual Capital
To Predict How People Will Perform
To Measure the Need for Training