Shrock and Coscarelli

Testing Human Competence

Our Background

Sharon Shrock

Sharon graduated from Indiana University in 1978 with a doctorate in Instructional Systems Technology.  She was on the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University before moving to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where she is currently a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction as well as the Coordinator for the Instructional Design and Technology Programs.

She specializes in instructional design and program evaluation and has been an evaluation consultant to international corporations, school districts, and Federal instructional programs.  She is the former Co-director of the Hewlett-Packard World Wide Test Development Center.

Service
Sharon is a past president of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology’s Division of Instructional Development.  She was a member of the International Society for Performance Improvement’s (formerly the National Society for Performance and Instruction) Senior Advisory Panel and has served on the editorial boards of most of the major academic journals in her field.

Publications
She is senior author of Criterion-Referenced Test Development and has written extensively in the field of testing and evaluation.  With over 100 presentations in her career and more than 50 articles she has seen her research and evaluation work published in major instructional design and technology journals including Educational Communications and Technology JournalPerformance Improvement Quarterly, and the Journal of Educational Computing Research.

Awards
In 1991 she won the Outstanding Book award for Criterion-referenced Test Development from AECT’s Division of Instructional Development and from the National Society for Performance and Instruction.  She also won ISPI’s Outstanding Performance Improvement Quarterly article.  In 1992 she was co-recipient of Indiana University’s L.C. Larson Alumni Award for “outstanding leadership in instructional systems.” She was the 1992 recipient of SIUC’s Outstanding Contribution to Graduate and Professional Education Award. In 1994 she received the SIUC College of Education Teacher of the Year Award.

William Coscarelli

Bill graduated from Indiana University in 1977 with a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems.  He then joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in their Learning Resources office.  He has spent sabbaticals as a visiting scholar at the National Center for Vocational Education at Ohio State, a lecturer in Holland, England, and Ireland, and most recently at Bonn, Cologne, and Cairo.  He is currently teaching full-time in the Instructional Design specialization at SIUC’s department of Curriculum & Instruction where he is now a Professor and the former Co-director of the Hewlett-Packard World Wide Test Development Center. 

Service
Bill has been elected as president of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology’s Division for Instructional Development, appointed as founding editor of Performance Improvement Quarterly, and as the first Vice-President of Publications for the International Society for Performance Improvement.  He also served as president of ISPI.  [ISPI, formerly the National Society for Peformance and Instruction, is an international association dedicated to improving performance in the workplace.  Founded in 1962, ISPI represents over 11,000 local and national members throughout North America and over 40 countries worldwide.

Publications
He is author of the Decision Making Inventory which is published in the US and has been translated for work in other countries.  The work in decision-making has been used extensively in Ohio State’s freshman career development program as well as in corporate sales training programs.  He is also co-author of The Guided design guidebook, and Criterion-referenced test development for corporate training: Technical and legal  issues.  He has over 100 presentations in his career and more than 60 articles.

Awards
In 1991 he won the outstanding book award for Criterion-Referenced Test Development  from both ISPI and AECT’s Division of Instructional Development.  In 1992 he was co-recipient of the L.C. Larson Indiana University Alumni Award for “outstanding leadership in instructional systems”  In 1996 he received ISPI’s Distinguished Service Award.