Essential Numeracy Skills
Essential Numeracy Skills has a customizable framework to suit the requirement of various industry roles. The framework forms the foundation for both the assessment items and the upgrading modules. It comprises of two equally important dimensions:
Content Topics and Sub-topics
To ensure that Essential Numeracy Skills is custom-tailored for specific requirements of industry roles, numeracy topics and sub-topics are identified to form the content dimension of the assessment framework. The framework can be expanded or adapted to suit the needs of a particular role to include modules which focus specifically on concepts for trades, human resources, marketing, or operations.
Performance Expectation
The assessment items and upgrading modules correspond to the broader goals of teaching and learning: (A) Knowing (B) Applying (C) Reasoning.
The assessment framework forms the basis for identifying assessment items that are part of the platform. The items are both constructed response (written) and selected response (multiple choice) type. The former provides a more reliable estimate of user ability than the latter because guessing is eliminated and the use of a computerized format enables a range of acceptable responses to be established for each item.
The assessment items are drawn from pools of items to form individual diagnostic and summative tests. The design ensures that the tests are:
- unique for every test taker;
- equally representative of both content and performance expectation dimensions of the assessment framework;
- long enough (i.e. a sufficient number of test items) to enable reliable estimates of test takers’ abilities but short enough to complete in a reasonable length of time.
The interactive, voice-enabled upgrading modules have been customized and aligned to the learning objectives of the framework. They provide users with the following learning experiences:
Mastery-based Learning
Topics are broken down to micro-steps for students to visualize and conceptualize and engage with numeracy concepts.
Various types of interactive practice scenarios with feedback mechanisms help users master concepts.
Individualized Learning
Users can progress through the modules and master concepts at their own pace.
