Hi, I'm Jim Persinger.
I'm Chair of the Department of Psychology
at Emporia State University and the
Director of the School Psychology Program
for about 20 years. My duties primarily
involve teaching assessment courses.
These are both graduate and undergraduate
courses and the candidates in there
what they all have in common is that they
are entering professions where they will
routinely be asked referral questions.
They have to design an assessment plan
and select tools to answer that question.
So, as you might imagine, I cannot do
my job competently without relying on
Buros Center for Testing resources and my
candidates cannot do their jobs
competently as a professional, once they
are in the field without having a deep
applied understanding of test
characteristics of ethical concerns that
they have to adhere to and use of the MMY
in order to select appropriate tools and
show that they're best for the purpose
for which they will be applied.
The details are in the assignment summary
so I'll just give you a brief overview
here of the instructional module.
Part one consists of a typical homework
exercise that would commonly be given to
show that they know how to use the MMY.
Now what's maybe a little different is
that since I'm primarily training
professionals, I ask them to imagine your
first year in the field, you tell me a
kind of question that will come your way
as the assessment guru and how you would
use MMY to answer that question.
So they describe a typical client, the
exact characteristics of the client,
the turn that referral question into a
description of constructs, and now
prove to me that you can select the right
instrument for the job and tell me
the pros and cons of it. Tell me
any weaknesses of the tool, and so on.
Part two is where it really ramps up.
Though it stays a very technical
exercise. The students are encouraged
to come up with as a bizarre of an
example of a construct that they might
want to measure as a person creating a new
test. I give them a bizarre example to
kind of warm them up to the idea.
Let's say you're a producer who's hired an
assessment guru to devise a tool to help
you understand whether during an
audition process an applicant for a job
would be the best person to put in charge
of your boy band as a headliner.
So with that bizarre example, the students
kind of go hog wild and they enter into a
discussion whether it's online or done
face to face, and they make the case that
their tool is one worth the exorbitant
costs that they're going to charge folks
for it. So they have to demonstrate
that they understand the technical
characteristics and give me evidence of
validity, give me evidence of reliability
that this tool is going to be the best
for the job, and somebody should
shell out the big bucks for it.
The students' response to the assignment
has been amazing. I take data every
few years. I do focus groups where they
describe the most memorable courses
they've had, assignments they've had
and any other experiences in their
training program that best prepared them
that first year in the field. And this one
routinely pops as one that they said,
“Boy, I really learned a lot from that
and you were right. I use this all of the
time in doing my job.”
The main practical suggestions I would
have should you choose to adopt this
assignment is that the instructions
describe using it online, but it works
perfectly face to face. It adapts
very easily. The other thing is that MMY
type assignments can involve tons of time
to grade and give feedback because it's
very technical, but you'll see inherent
to the assignment the students critique
each others as part of the assignment
and they do a great job.
So usually I'm not having to do more than
just validate that what their peers told
them is spot on.
So,I hope you and your students enjoy.