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Archives for Vincent Lima

Subject Matter Experts – Managing them as a Valuable Asset

December 13, 2016  | Published by  | Comments Off on Subject Matter Experts – Managing them as a Valuable Asset

Co-authored by Vincent Lima and David Cox. In addition to their mission critical human capital contributions, Subject Matter Experts (SME’s)... View Article





Write Item Variants to Save Money and Improve Test Quality

December 6, 2016  | Published by  | Comments Off on Write Item Variants to Save Money and Improve Test Quality

An item variant is simply a new test item that is based on an existing test item. Writing item variants... View Article





Inventory Planning in Testing: How Many Items Do We Need to Write?

December 20, 2015  | Published by  | Comments Off on Inventory Planning in Testing: How Many Items Do We Need to Write?

It's one of the most basic questions in planning and maintaining an examination program: How many items do we need to write, review, and pretest? Write too many, and you’re expending resources on inventory that will go stale. Write too few, and you can’t assemble the requisite number of test forms to your specifications.

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To answer the question, you need to review the rules you have established for yourself – your set of constraints.





Scenarios in Testing: Five Tips to Improve Your Mileage

December 11, 2015  | Published by  | Comments Off on Scenarios in Testing: Five Tips to Improve Your Mileage

In licensing and certification tests, brevity is considered a virtue. Here’s the stem of a raw item that lacks this virtue.

The driver of a midsized sedan is pleased with the number of miles per gallon of gasoline the car consumes in highway conditions, but is unhappy with the amount of gasoline consumed in city driving. After changing the car’s oil and checking the tire pressure, the driver decides to look at the octane rating of the gasoline. Which of the following grades of gasoline is likely to provide the driver with the most economical gasoline use in city driving conditions?





Avoiding (Bad) Discrimination in Licensing and Certification Tests

December 5, 2015  | Published by  | Comments Off on Avoiding (Bad) Discrimination in Licensing and Certification Tests

Testing programs are built to discriminate. Licensing and certification tests, specifically, class people into two groups: those who receive the credential and those who do not. The idea is to discriminate on the basis of relevant factors (“Does the candidate now have the knowledge required to perform the task at the required level?”) and not on the basis of irrelevant factors – whatever they may be.





Eight Tips for Reporting Failing Test Scores on Licensing and Certification Tests

December 4, 2015  | Published by  | Comments Off on Eight Tips for Reporting Failing Test Scores on Licensing and Certification Tests

For the people who take your test, after all the studying and stressing out, nothing beats getting a certificate with a shiny gold seal in your mailbox. That makes a passing score report fairly easy to design. It’s going to be a variation on “Hooray! You made it!”

Chances are, though, that not every candidate is going to get that letter. What are you going to tell the candidate who fails?

Here are eight pro tips: