Getting Started with Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Getting Started with Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
Post-registration, RTOs are tasked with many responsibilities including annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, and validation is often the most challenging.
We've covered validation in many articles, but it's worth re-examining. ASQA defines it as a quality review of the assessment procedure.
Validation involves checking which aspects of an RTO's assessment process are accurate and identifying areas for improvement. With a solid understanding of its components, validation is less intimidating.
Clause 1.8 in the SRTOs 2015 outlines that RTOs must ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, comply with training package requirements and the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
The standards require RTOs to perform two types of validation.
The initial type of assessment validation ensures compliance with the training package assessment requirements within your RTO's scope.
The subsequent validation type ensures assessments are in line with the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.
This implies that we validate both prior to and following the assessment. The focus of this article is on the first type: assessment tool validation.
An Overview of the Two Types of Assessment Validation
An Overview of Assessment Validation
As discussed earlier and in our prior blogs, validation involves two parts: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Pre-assessment validation or verification, also known as assessment tool validation, relates to the first part of the clause, ensuring all unit requirements are met and workbooks are 100% compliant.
Conversely, post-assessment validation pertains to the implementation, ensuring Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments in line with the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
In this article, we will emphasize assessment tool validation.
Steps for Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
Understanding the two types of validation allows us to delve into the specifics of assessment tool validation.
When Should You Conduct Assessment Tool Validation?
Assessment tool validation ensures that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are addressed by your assessment tools.
Thus, whenever new learning resources are purchased, you must conduct assessment tool validation before allowing student use.
You don’t need to wait until your next 5-year validation schedule. Immediately validate new resources to ensure they’re ready for student use.
Yet, this is not the only occasion to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:
- resources get updated
- your scope includes new training products
- your course includes training product updates
- your risk assessment includes identifying your learning resources as a risk
ASQA's risk-based approach to regulation necessitates regular risk assessments by RTOs. If there are student complaints about learning resources, it's an opportune time for assessment tool validation.
Training Products to Validate
Remember, this validation aims to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs are expected to validate all unit resources.
What Do You Need for Assessment Tool Validation?
Educational Resources
To validate assessment tools, you need the complete suite of your learning resources:
Mapping tool – the first document to review. It indicates which assessment items meet unit requirements, aiding in faster validation.
Learner/student workbook – check its suitability for use as an assessment tool. Verify clear instructions and sufficient 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.
Panel for Validation
Clause 1.11 outlines the criteria for validation panel members, specifying that validation can be done by one or more people. RTOs typically require all trainers and assessors to participate, occasionally inviting industry experts.
In total, your validation panel must have:
Vocational competencies and current industry skills that relate to the unit being validated
Up-to-date expertise and skills in vocational teaching and learning
Any of the following training and assessment credentials:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or the next version
Validation document/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.
Having a validation tool supports the validation process and documentation. It simplifies understanding how each assessment item maps to 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.
It also serves as evidence that you have validated your resources before students use them.
ASQA does not provide a recommended or required template for assessment tool validation, but many templates are available online. These tools generally have validators review the tools as a whole to determine if they meet the principles of assessment.
Principles of Assessment Form Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable
While templates like these make validation easier, they also allow for judgment errors since there is little room for commenting on each assessment item.
We recommend using a more detailed template to examine each unit requirement and the assessment items that correspond to them. Here is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Instructions for Assessment Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Should Be Inspected?
As we explained in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, it’s vital that your assessment tools enable trainers to follow assessment principles and evidence rules.
Assessment Core Principles
Fairness – Are equal opportunities and access ensured in the assessment process?
Flexibility – Are different options available in the assessment to demonstrate competence based on individual needs and preferences?
Validity – Does the assessment test what it is meant to test? Is it a valid tool for assessing the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment produce consistent results every time, regardless of who conducts the training? Will different assessors make the same decision on skill competence?
Evidence Rules
Validity – Is the evidence showing 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 enough evidence to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Is the assessment tool confirming that the work is the candidate’s own?
Currency – Are the assessment tools in line with current units of competency and contemporary industry practices?
Despite being regularly covered in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, many tools still have issues with these requirements.
To avoid employing learning resources that leave unit requirements unmet, be sure to adhere to these guidelines:
Be Consistent with Your Teachings
Pay attention to the verbs in the unit requirements and ensure they are addressed by the assessment item. For example, in the unit CHCECE032 Nurture babies and toddlers, one performance evidence requirement asks students to:
Perform each of the following tasks at least once with two different babies under 12 months old in a safe environment, using age-appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication per service and regulatory requirements:
changing diapers
prepare bottles, feed infants from bottles, and clean equipment
solid foods preparation and feeding babies
respond suitably to baby signs and cues
prepare and settle infants for rest
monitor and foster age-appropriate physical exploration and gross motor skills
Having students describe the process of changing nappies for babies under 12 months doesn’t meet the unit requirement. Unless it’s intended to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be performing the tasks.
Plurals Matter!
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.
Mind the numbers. In our CHCECE032 example, one unit requirement asks students to complete the tasks at least once with two different babies under 12 months old. Doing the tasks twice with one baby doesn’t suffice.
All or No Competence
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?
Give More Specificity
Each assessment item must have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the student’s competence. Therefore, it’s crucial that your instructions do not confuse students or assessors. For instance:
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
What types of information can be included in a work package?
The answer could include:
Mandatory resources
Relevant read more costs
Activity length
Allocated roles and responsibilities
When an assessment item calls for multiple answers, indicate the number of answers a student needs to provide. This way, your assessment is reliable, and the evidence gathered is valid.
This also applies to assessment items with double-barrelled questions or those that ask for multiple answers at once. 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.
Possible answers could include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering controls, personal protective equipment
Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolation, use of engineering controls
People – isolating, engineering, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolation, engineering controls, administrative controls
Equipment or machinery – isolation, engineering controls, administration
Avoiding double-barrelled questions simplifies responses for students and allows assessors to accurately judge student competence.
Seeing these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers offer audit guarantees?” But such guarantees mean you must wait for an audit before rectifying noncompliance. This affects your compliance history, so it’s wiser to take the safe and compliant route.