Cognisco

In seeking to develop an assessment system that could accurately measure what the individuals within an organisation understand about their job, Cognisco drew upon research in the areas of memory, learning, understanding, decision-making, and education.

Research into memory, carried out by psychologists and scientists such as Beddeley (1976) and Bransford & Johnson (1972), has shown that memory and understanding are inextricably linked, both playing a crucial role in determining how and if we remember new information. Research (i.e. Tulving 1962) revealed that we utilise a number of different means for remembering information, for example, mnemonics such as “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vein” help us to remember the order of colours in a rainbow – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. However, it is now recognised that new information is best remembered, and is more efficiently utilised when it is incorporated within an existing knowledge structure, that it is processed at a deeper level than by applying an unrelated structure. It is this characteristic that differentiates between the novice and the expert – experts incorporate information into an existing knowledge structure creating an increasingly interconnected web knowledge that enables them to handle to handle unexpected events. Novices on the other hand are reliant on a step-by-step process, or mnemonic, and may become confused or thrown off course by the same event.

Understanding can therefore be seen as providing a structure for knowledge that is both meaningful and relevant allowing us to cope with unexpected events and act accordingly.

Cognisco recognised that a weakness of most assessments used by organisations is that they assess memory. In doing so they can not fully account for what will determine whether a task will be completed successfully. If the novice forgets their mnemonic then it is unlikely that they will be able to complete their task. Therefore Cognisco developed an assessment system that can measure understanding and thus can more acutely provide information for an organisation about whether an individual will complete a task successfully.

In developing the Cognisco assessment system research was undertaken into the questioning methodologies, i.e. multiple-choice questions and essay type questions. Working with Professor Stuart Sutherland at the Sussex University (deceased 1998) Cognisco gained an understanding of decision-making and irrational behavior. Sutherland claimed that multiple-choice assessments tell us more about an individual’s decision making patterns than it does about the individual’s knowledge. Cognisco assessments solve this problem by ensuring that all questions require the individual to draw upon their knowledge base, for example they may need to pull together knowledge from more than one area of their job, or they may be faced with five options of which any number may be correct, and which any incorrect answer is totally plausible.

Cognisco use a framework that ensures that assessment questions measure an individual’s understanding at a number of levels. This is based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains (1956). Like Bloom, Cognisco believes that training and learning within organisations should focus on ‘mastery’, and therefore that it is important to assess not just an individual’s knowledge, but also their comprehension, application, and analysis of information.

Professor Stuart Sutherland’s work on irrational behavior provided a further stimulus in the development of the Cognisco assessment system. Sutherland highlighted the importance that an individual’s confidence plays in their behavior. Therefore Cognisco assessments incorporate a unique mechanism that allows the measurement of the individual’s confidence in their response. This provides an extremely valuable insight into an individual’s knowledge and can assist the organisation in understanding how that knowledge will be used.

Once an individual has taken a Cognisco assessment the organisation will know what aspects of their job the individual understands and misunderstands. This enables the organisation to provide targeted support, learning and training for the individual so that any knowledge and understanding gaps can be filled.

References

Baddeley, Alan D (1976). The Psychology of Memory, New York, NY: Basic Books.

Bloom, B. S (ed.) (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the classification of educational goals – Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay.

Bransford, John D., and Johnson, Merieta K (1972.) "Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigators of comprehension and recall." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11: 717-726.

Sutherland, Stuart (1994). Irrationality: The Enemy Within. Penguin Books Ltd.

Tulving, E (1962). "Subjective organization in free recall of unrelated words." Psychological Review, 69: 344-354.