Exploring Assessment Validation: Steps to Validate Assessments
Exploring Assessment Validation: Steps to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
Among the numerous obligations RTOs face post-registration—annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, marketing compliance—validation is often the most dreaded.
Despite our extensive coverage on validation, let's re-examine the term. ASQA states that validation is a quality check of the assessment process.
Simply put, validation confirms which aspects of an RTO's assessment process are right and identifies where improvements are needed. A clear understanding of its main components makes it less intimidating.
Clause 1.8 of the 2015 SRTOs indicates that RTOs need to ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, are compliant with training package requirements and conducted in accordance with the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
The standards mandate two types of validation.
The first assessment validation type verifies that your RTO's assessments adhere to the training package requirements within your scope.
The second validation type ensures that assessments adhere to the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.
This indicates validation occurs before and after the assessment process. We will focus on the first type: assessment tool validation.
Breaking Down the Two Types of Assessment Validation
The Fundamentals of Assessment Validation
As discussed before and in previous blogs, validation includes two processes: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Assessment tool validation, often referred to as pre-assessment validation or verification, deals with ensuring all unit requirements are addressed as per the first part of the clause, ensuring complete workbook compliance.
In post-assessment validation, the emphasis is on implementation, ensuring that Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments as per the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
Our focus in this article will be on assessment tool validation.
Methods for Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
Having discussed the two types of validation, let’s delve into 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 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:
- your resources get updated
- new training products are added by you on scope
- your course includes training product updates
- identifying your learning resources as a risk during your 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.
Choosing Training Products for Validation
Recall, this type of validation aims to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs must validate each unit's resources.
Starting Assessment Tool Validation: What You Need
Teaching Materials
For validation of your assessment tools, you will require the full set 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 as an assessment tool. Confirm clear instructions and adequate answer fields. This is a common problem.
Assessor guide/marking guide – ensure sufficient instructions for assessors and clear benchmarks for each assessment item. Clear benchmarks are vital for reliable assessment outcomes.
Other related resources – may consist of checklists, registers, and templates created separately from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to ensure they are appropriate for the assessment task and address unit requirements.
Assessment 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.
Together, your validation panel should possess:
Relevant vocational competencies and up-to-date industry skills for the unit being validated
Up-to-date expertise and skills in vocational teaching and learning
Either of the following training and assessment credentials:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its updated 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 helps in both the validation process and documentation. It makes it simpler to see 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.
It serves as documentation that you have validated your resources prior to student use.
Although ASQA does not recommend or require a particular template for assessment tool validation, many templates are accessible online. These tools typically have validators examine the tools in their entirety to determine if they meet the principles of assessment.
Assessment Principles Template Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable
Though these templates make validation easier, they often result in judgment errors due to limited space for comments on each assessment item.
We highly recommend using a more detailed template to inspect each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Here is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Guidelines Standards Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What to Inspect?
As discussed in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, it’s essential that your assessment tools enable trainers to follow assessment principles and evidence rules.
Basic Principles of Assessment
Fairness – Is equal opportunity and access provided to everyone in the assessment process?
Flexibility – Does the assessment provide different options to demonstrate competence according to individual needs and preferences?
Validity – Is the assessment measuring what it is supposed to measure? Is it a valid tool for assessing the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment yield the same results each time, no matter who conducts the training? Will different assessors make consistent decisions on skill competence?
Rules of Evidence
Validity – Does the evidence prove that the candidate possesses 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 ensure the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Does the assessment tool verify that the work is the candidate’s own?
Currency – Are the assessment tools updated to reflect current units of competency and industry practices?
Even though these are regularly addressed in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, numerous tools fail to meet these requirements.
To avoid employing learning resources that leave unit requirements unmet, be sure to adhere to these guidelines:
Act on Your Words
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:
nappy change
prepare bottles, bottle-feed babies and sanitize equipment
solid food prep and feeding infants
respond to infant signs and cues appropriately
prepare and settle babies for rest
monitor and foster physical exploration and gross motor skills appropriate for the age
Getting students to describe the nappy-changing process for babies under 12 months old doesn’t directly meet the unit requirement. Unless the read more requirement assesses underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be doing 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.
Pay attention to 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 isn’t enough.
Complete or Not Competent
Observe the lists. As illustrated 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?
Can You Be More Specific?
Every assessment item must have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on student competence. Thus, make sure your instructions are not confusing for students or assessors. For example:
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:
Required materials
Pertinent costs
Time frame for activities
Allocated roles and responsibilities
When an assessment item calls for several answers, indicate the number of answers required from a student. This way, your assessment remains reliable, and the evidence collected is valid.
The same applies to assessment items with double-barrelled questions or questions that ask for more than one answer simultaneously. These can confuse both students and assessors, as illustrated in the example below:
Name a hazard and/or environmental issue in the work area and pick the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Possible answers can include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolation of work area, engineering controls, personal protective equipment
Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolating, engineering controls
People – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolation, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolation, use of engineering controls, administrative controls
Equipment or machinery – isolating, use of 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.