Practical Aptitude Tests
Each year our Engineering Dept assess the practical abilities of students wanting to access our Engineering courses. They tried the Practical Aptitude Tests on our current level three cohort to see if they would be suitable to use. Staff and students quickly established that the questions were too difficult for our learners but the principle of the tests are perfect for our needs. If anyone uses or knows of a simplified version of this please let me know. Thanks.
We tried out the 3 Practice Aptitude Tests, which consist of, numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, and diagrammatic reasoning
ReplyDeleteThe feedback was uniformly pretty negative. Comments included, "far too scary for most of our learners (adult community learning / NEETs)". "Limited relevance.. how many jobs require such tests?". "Horrible, exam feel". "Language level and subject matter intimidating". "Timer in the corner adds further pressure to learner's experience". "Strong corporate feel" (NB the tests are often used as a selection tool for graduate fast-track schemes). "Emphasis on technique and regular practice, rather than learning".
We could see some possible uses i.e. tests could be useful for individual practice if someone is looking to improve their numeracy / verbal reasoning at a relatively high level.
They could also be used in group / informal competition situation if the learners were a well-formed group and confident.
Overall, these Practical Aptitude Tests simply aren't appropriate to our learners (pre-entry to L2) and we felt they would need to be pre-tested by tutors and their applicability very seriously considered before they were used, even with higher level and confident students.