As CLASS trainers, we want our participants to successfully certify. However, we also know that no matter how good our training skills, there’s a reasonable chance that some of our participants will not certify on the first round of testing. That’s typical and not a reflection on the trainer.
We should not take it as a personal affront when participants don’t pass on their first attempt. Remember, the CLASS is a complex tool and it can be difficult for people who have a lot of experience to put it aside and put on their CLASS “lenses.” So instead of despairing when participants doesn’t pass, think about how you can best support them as they prepare for round two.
Whenever possible, schedule a time to meet with the participant to go over the score report and learn more about how they approached the coding process. Looking over the score report prior to the meeting gives us invaluable information about a participant’s coding tendencies. We can see if someone is consistently having difficulty with a dimension or a domain or if they struggled with a particular video. We can also see if they tend to over or under code certain dimensions.
If they are having problems with a specific dimension or domain, we know that our meeting time should focus on those aspects of the CLASS. If one video is the problem, we can pretty confidently assume that there was something about the teacher or the activity that caused the participant to lose their objectivity. If they bombed the 4th or 5th video, we should check to see if they watched all 5 videos on one day and feel victim to coder fatigue.
Questions to ask during this meeting include:
- Tell me about your testing experience.
- When and where did you test? What time of day?
- Were you able to test without interruption?
- How did you space out watching each video?
- What do you think prevented you from becoming reliable?
- How did you approach coding?
- What was going when you coded [Insert Title] video?
Oftentimes, our participants know exactly whey they had problems; they did not feel well, they were interrupted, or they had an emotional reaction to a video. Even when this is the case, they still benefit from talking it through and learning more about the CLASS.
What do you do to help your participants prepare for additional rounds of testing?
