Navigating Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Navigating Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
Registration brings RTOs many duties like annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, yet validation often proves to be the most feared.
Despite our extensive coverage on validation, let's re-examine the term. ASQA states that validation is a quality check of the assessment process.
In other words, validation identifies which elements of an RTO's assessment process are done right and which need improvement. A proper understanding of its key components makes the task less daunting.
As stated in Clause 1.8 of the SRTOs 2015, RTOs must ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, comply with the training package requirements and adhere to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
The standards require RTOs to perform two types of validation.
The first kind of assessment validation ensures your RTO's assessment adheres to the training package requirements within your scope.
The second validation ensures assessments are conducted according to the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.
This shows that validation happens pre- and post-assessment. We will focus on the first type—assessment tool validation.
Exploring the Two Types of Assessment Validation
Assessment Validation: What It Is
As mentioned earlier and in one of our previous blog posts, validation is split into two stages: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Assessment tool validation, also known as pre-assessment validation or verification, pertains to the first part of the clause, focusing on ensuring all unit requirements are met and that all workbooks are fully compliant.
On the other side, post-assessment validation pertains to the implementation, requiring Registered Training Organisations to adhere to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
This piece will highlight assessment tool validation.
Steps for Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
Having distinguished between the two types of validation, let’s dive into the details of assessment tool validation.
When is Assessment Tool Validation Conducted?
Assessment tool validation ensures that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are included in your assessment tools.
Hence, whenever new learning resources are bought, assessment tool validation should be carried out before students use them.
There's no requirement to wait for the next validation schedule in your 5-year cycle. Validate new resources promptly to ensure they’re appropriate for students.
However, there are additional reasons to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation also when you:
- resources get updated
- new training products are added to your scope
- your course includes training product updates
- learning resources are identified as a risk during the risk assessment
The Australian Skills Quality Authority's risk-based approach to regulation means RTOs must conduct regular risk assessments. Complaints from students about learning resources signal the need for assessment tool validation.
Determining Training Products for Validation
Keep in mind, this validation ensures that all learning resources comply before use. All RTOs must validate resources for each unit.
Resources Required for Assessment Tool Validation
Study Resources
Given that you are conducting assessment tool validation, you will need the full array of your learning resources:
Mapping tool – the first document to check. It indicates which assessment items align with unit requirements, making validation faster.
Learner/student workbook – assess its appropriateness for use as an assessment tool. Verify clear instructions and adequate answer fields. This is often a gap.
Assessor guide/marking guide – also verify if instructions for assessors are sufficient and if clear benchmarks for each assessment item are provided. Clear benchmarks are crucial for reliable assessment outcomes.
Other related resources – may include checklists, registers, and templates developed separately from the workbook and marking guide. Validate these to ensure they suit the assessment task and address unit requirements.
Validation Team
Clause 1.11 specifies the requirements for validation panel members. It states validation can be performed by one or more people. However, RTOs usually require all trainers and assessors to participate, sometimes including industry experts.
Your validation panel must, as a group, possess:
Vocational competencies and industry skills relevant to the unit being validated
Current expertise and skills in vocational teaching and learning
Any one of the following training and assessment qualifications:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its equivalent
Validation form/template
Having a validation tool helps you with both the validation process and documentation. Using a validation tool makes it easier to look at how each assessment item maps against each unit requirement.
A validation tool is beneficial for both the validation process and documentation. It makes it easier to understand how each assessment item aligns with each unit requirement.
At the same time, it can serve as your document evidence that you have validated your resources before letting the students use them.
Simultaneously, it provides documentation that you have validated your resources before students use them.
ASQA does not specify a required template for assessment tool validation, but many templates are accessible online. These tools usually have validators review the tools as a whole to ensure they meet the principles of assessment.
Principles of Assessment Checklist Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable
Though these templates make validation easier, they can lead to judgment errors because they provide little room for comments on each assessment item.
It is highly advisable to use a more detailed template for evaluating click here each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Below is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Directions Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Needs Checking?
As we covered in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, your assessment tools must ensure trainers adhere to assessment principles and evidence rules.
Assessment Key Principles
Fairness – Are equal opportunities and access offered to everyone in the assessment process?
Flexibility – Does the assessment offer multiple ways to show competence according to different needs and preferences?
Validity – Is the assessment evaluating what it is intended to evaluate? Is it a valid tool for assessing the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment give consistent results every time, no matter who conducts the training? Will different assessors consistently decide on skill competence?
Evidence Basic Rules
Validity – Is the evidence confirming that the candidate has the skills, knowledge, and attributes described in the unit of competency and associated assessment requirements?
Sufficiency – Is there enough evidence to ensure that the learner has the skills and knowledge required?
Sufficiency – Is there adequate evidence to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Is the assessment tool ensuring that the work is the candidate’s own?
Currency – Are the assessment tools updated to reflect current units of competency and industry practices?
Although these are regularly covered in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, numerous tools still struggle to meet these requirements.
To avoid employing learning resources that leave unit requirements unmet, be sure to adhere to these guidelines:
Walk the Talk
Take note of the verbs used in the unit requirements and make sure they are addressed by the assessment item. For instance, in the unit CHCECE032 Nurture babies and toddlers, one performance evidence requirement requires students to:
Perform each of the following activities at least once with two different babies under 12 months old in a safe environment, using age-appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication according to service and regulatory requirements:
nappying
prepare bottles, bottle-feed babies, and clean equipment
solid food preparation and feeding babies
respond properly to baby signs and cues
settle infants for sleep and prepare them
monitor and foster physical exploration and gross motor skills appropriate for the age
Having students describe the nappy-changing process for babies under 12 months old doesn’t directly meet the unit requirement. Unless the unit requirement is meant to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be performing the tasks.
Mind the Plurals!
Pay attention to the numbers. In our example on one of the unit requirements of CHCECE032, this single unit requirement calls for the students to complete the tasks at least once on two different babies under 12 months of age. Having students complete the tasks listed twice on just 1 baby won’t cut it.
Pay attention to the numbers. In our CHCECE032 example, one unit requirement requires students to complete the tasks at least once with two different babies under 12 months old. Doing the tasks twice with one baby isn’t enough.
All Requirements or Not Competent
Observe the lists. As mentioned above, if students perform only half the tasks listed, it’s non-compliant. Each assessment item must address all requirements, or the student is not yet competent and the assessment tool is non-compliant.
Can you be more specific?
Could You Be More Specific?
Each assessment item needs clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the student’s competence. Therefore, it’s important that your instructions are not confusing for students or assessors. For instance:
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
What information can be included in a work package?
The answer could include:
Mandatory resources
Relevant costs
Duration of activities
Assigned roles and responsibilities
If an assessment item demands multiple answers, specify the number of answers required from a student. This ensures your assessment is reliable, and the evidence obtained is valid.
This is true for assessment items with double-barrelled questions or questions requiring more than one answer at the same time. These can confuse students and assessors, as shown in the sample question below:
Name a hazard and/or environmental issue in the workplace and choose the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Answers might include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering, personal protective equipment
Work area and ground conditions – elimination, isolation, engineering controls
People – isolating, engineering controls, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolation, use of engineering controls, administrative controls
Equipment or machinery – isolation, use of engineering controls, administrative controls
Steering clear of double-barrelled questions makes it easier for students to answer and for assessors to accurately judge student competence.
Considering these requirements, you might wonder, “Don’t learning resource developers have audit guarantees?” But these guarantees mean you have to wait for an audit to rectify noncompliance. This impacts your compliance history, so it’s wiser to take a safe and compliant approach.