Assessment Validation Simplified: How to Validate Assessments
Assessment Validation Simplified: How to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
After gaining registration, RTOs need to monitor several aspects including annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, with validation being a major concern.
Even though we've covered validation in depth, let’s revisit its definition. ASQA defines validation as a quality review of the assessment process.
Validation involves verifying which areas of an RTO's assessment process are correct and highlighting where improvements are needed. Understanding its key components makes the task 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 first assessment validation type verifies that your RTO's assessments adhere to the training package requirements within your scope.
The next type of validation confirms assessments are carried out following 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.
The Fundamentals of the Two Types of Assessment Validation
The Basics of Assessment Validation
As discussed earlier and in our prior blogs, validation involves two parts: (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.
Conversely, post-assessment validation focuses on the implementation side, ensuring Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments in line with the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
Our focus here will be on assessment tool validation.
How Assessment Tool Validation is Conducted
After reviewing the two types of validation, let’s explore the specifics of assessment tool validation.
When is Assessment Tool Validation Conducted?
The purpose of assessment tool validation is to confirm that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are met by your assessment tools.
This implies that any time you get new learning resources, assessment tool validation must be done before they are used by students.
There's no necessity to wait for the next 5-year cycle validation schedule. Validate new resources immediately to ensure they are appropriate for student use.
Still, this isn't the only reason for this type of validation. Conduct assessment tool validation when you:
- you update your resources
- new training products are added to your scope
- course is reviewed against training product updates
- you identify your learning resources as a risk during your risk assessment
ASQA's risk-based regulation approach requires RTOs to conduct regular risk assessments. Therefore, complaints from students about learning resources are a perfect time for assessment tool validation.
What Training Products Need Validation?
Recall, this type of validation aims to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs must validate each unit's resources.
Necessary Resources for Assessment Tool Validation
Educational Resources
To validate assessment tools, you need the complete suite of your learning resources:
Mapping tool – start by investigating this document. It shows which assessment items meet unit requirements, facilitating quicker validation.
Learner/student workbook – during validation, check if it's suitable as an assessment tool. Ensure instructions are clear and answer fields are sufficient. This is a common gap.
Assessor guide/marking guide – ensure that instructions for assessors are sufficient and clear benchmarks for each assessment item are provided. Clear benchmarks are essential for reliable assessment outcomes.
Other related resources – might include checklists, registers, and templates developed independently from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to confirm they fit the assessment task and address unit requirements.
Validation Board
Clause 1.11 specifies the criteria for validation panel members, indicating that validation can involve one or more persons. RTOs usually require all trainers and assessors to participate, sometimes including industry experts.
Your validation panel, as a group, must 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
One of the following training and assessment qualifications:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or the successor version
Assessment validation tool/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 assists with the validation process and documentation. It makes it easier to view 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.
Additionally, it serves as documented proof that you have validated your resources before student use.
While ASQA does not have a recommended or required template for assessment tool validation, many templates are available online. These tools generally require validators to review the tools as a whole to see if they meet the principles of assessment.
Assessment Principles Guide 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 a more detailed template to inspect each unit requirement and the assessment items that correspond to them. Here is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Instructions Standards Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What to Look For?
As highlighted in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, it is essential that your assessment tools enable trainers to adhere to assessment principles and evidence rules.
Principles of Assessment
Fairness – Does the assessment process provide equal opportunity and access to everyone?
Flexibility – Are multiple options available in the assessment to demonstrate competence based on different needs and preferences?
Validity – Does the assessment assess what it is intended to assess? Is it a valid tool for measuring the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment achieve consistent results every time, no matter who conducts the training? Will different assessors consistently decide on skill competence?
Basic Rules of Evidence
Validity – Does the evidence indicate 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 the evidence adequate to ensure the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Does the assessment tool ensure that the work belongs to the candidate?
Currency – Do the assessment tools correspond to current units of competency and website industry practices?
Despite these being frequently addressed in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, heaps of tools still have problems with these requirements.
To avoid employing learning resources that leave unit requirements unmet, be sure to follow these guidelines:
Live Up to Your Words
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 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:
nappy change
prepare bottles, feed infants from bottles, and clean equipment
solid food preparation and feeding babies
respond suitably to infant signs and cues
prepare infants for sleep and soothe them
monitor and support age-appropriate physical exploration and gross motor skills
Getting students to describe the nappy-changing process for babies under 12 months old doesn’t directly meet the unit requirement. Unless the requirement assesses underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be doing the tasks.
Pay Attention to 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.
Notice the numbers. In the 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 doesn’t meet the requirement.
Full or Not Competent
Mind the lists. Again, if students perform just 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?
Every assessment item should have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on student competence. Thus, make sure your instructions do not confuse students or assessors. For example:
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
What details can be included in a work package?
Answers can include:
Essential resources
Relevant costs
Activity length
Allocated roles and responsibilities
If an assessment item calls for several answers, specify the number of answers needed from a student. This ensures your assessment is reliable, and the evidence gathered 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:
Identify a hazard and/or environmental concern in the work area and select the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Possible answers could include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – work area isolation, engineering controls, PPE
Work area and ground conditions – elimination, isolation, engineering controls
People – isolating, engineering controls, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration
Equipment or machinery – isolating, engineering, administration
Avoiding double-barrelled questions makes it simpler for students to respond and for assessors to accurately judge competence.
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.