Assessment Validation: What You Need to Know to Validate Assessments
Assessment Validation: What You Need to Know to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
RTOs face many tasks after registration, such as annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, but validation is typically the most daunting.
Even though we’ve written about validation several times, let's revisit its definition. ASQA calls validation a quality review 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 per the 2015 SRTOs Clause 1.8, RTOs are required to ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, meet training package requirements and follow the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
The standards mandate 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 following validation type ensures that assessments follow the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.
This suggests we perform validation both before and after the assessment. This article will concentrate on the first type—assessment tool validation.
Exploring the Two Types of Assessment Validation
Assessment Validation: An Explanation
As mentioned earlier and in our earlier blogs, validation is split into two parts: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Pre-assessment validation, also referred to as assessment tool validation, is related to the first part of the clause, ensuring all unit requirements are addressed and workbooks are entirely compliant.
On the other hand, post-assessment validation deals with implementation, ensuring Registered Training Organisations follow the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
This piece will highlight assessment tool validation.
Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
Having outlined the two types of validation, it’s time to dive into assessment tool validation.
Timing for Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
The objective of assessment tool validation is to ensure that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are addressed by your assessment tools.
This means that whenever new learning resources are acquired, you must perform assessment tool validation before student use.
There's no requirement to wait for your next 5-year cycle validation schedule. Validate new resources promptly to ensure they’re ready for students.
Nonetheless, there are other reasons to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:
- resources are updated
- your scope includes new training products
- you review your course against training product updates
- you identify your learning resources as a risk during your risk assessment
The Australian Skills Quality Authority employs a risk-based approach for regulating RTOs and expects regular risk assessments. Therefore, student complaints about learning resources are an ideal time to conduct assessment tool validation.
What Training Products Should Be Validated?
Recall, this type of validation aims to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs must validate each unit's resources.
What Do You Need for Assessment Tool Validation?
Instructional Resources
Since you are conducting assessment tool validation, you will need the entire 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 – ensure it's appropriate for use as an assessment tool. Check if instructions are clear and answer fields are sufficient. This is a frequent gap.
Assessor guide/marking guide – confirm that instructions for assessors are adequate and clear benchmarks for each assessment item exist. Clear benchmarks are crucial for reliable assessment outcomes.
Other related resources – these could be checklists, registers, and templates created separately from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to confirm they fit the assessment task and meet unit requirements.
Validation Group
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.
Collectively, your validation panel must have:
Relevant vocational competencies and industry skills applicable to the unit being validated
Current knowledge and skills related to vocational teaching and learning
One of these training and assessment qualifications:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or the next version
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.
Using a validation tool is advantageous for both the validation process and documentation. It aids in viewing how each assessment item matches 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
While templates of this kind simplify validation, they can introduce judgment errors due to a lack of space for comments on each assessment item.
It is highly advisable to use a more detailed template for evaluating each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Below is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Guidelines Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What to Inspect?
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 Basic Principles
Fairness website – Are equal opportunities and access offered to everyone in the assessment process?
Flexibility – Are different options provided in the assessment to demonstrate competence based on individual needs and preferences?
Validity – Is the assessment assessing what it is supposed to assess? Is it a valid tool for measuring the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment achieve the same results every time, regardless of who conducts the training? Will different assessors consistently make decisions on skill competence?
Evidence Key Rules
Validity – Is the evidence verifying 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 sufficient evidence to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Does the assessment tool ensure that the work belongs to the candidate?
Currency – Are the assessment tools reflective of current units of competency and contemporary industry practices?
Although these are often addressed in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, numerous tools fail to meet these requirements.
To prevent using learning resources that do not meet some unit requirements, make sure to follow these guidelines:
Practice Your Teachings
Focus on the verbs used in the unit requirements and make sure they are addressed by the assessment item. For example, in the unit CHCECE032 Nurture babies and toddlers, one performance evidence requirement requires students to:
Carry out each of the following at least once with two different babies under 12 months old in a safe environment, using age-appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication as per service and regulatory requirements:
changing diapers
prepare bottles, bottle feed infants, and clean equipment
prepare solid foods and feed babies
respond to baby signs and cues suitably
prepare babies for sleep and soothe them
monitor and support age-appropriate physical exploration and gross motor skills
Having students explain the process of nappy changing for babies under 12 months doesn’t meet the unit requirement. Unless it’s meant to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be doing the tasks.
Notice 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 sufficient.
All Requirements or Not Competent
Mind the lists. In the previous example, 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?
Add More Specificity
Each assessment item should have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the student’s competence. Hence, it’s important that your instructions do not confuse students or assessors. For instance:
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
The answer can include:
Compulsory resources
Related costs
Activity length
Appointed duties 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:
Identify a hazard and/or environmental issue in the workplace and select the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Possible answers include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering, personal protective equipment
Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolating, engineering
People – isolation, engineering, administrative controls
Structural hazards – substituting, isolation, use of engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolation, engineering controls, administration
Equipment or machinery – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration
Avoiding double-barrelled questions makes it easier for students to answer and for assessors to judge competence accurately.
Given these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers provide audit guarantees?” But such guarantees require you to wait for an audit before rectifying noncompliance. This impacts your compliance history, so it’s wiser to take the safe and compliant route.