Understanding Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Understanding Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
RTOs must handle various tasks post-registration, such as annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, but validation usually presents the biggest challenge.
While we've discussed validation in multiple articles, let's return to the basics. ASQA defines validation as a quality check of the assessment process.
Validation is the process of confirming accurate areas in an RTO's assessment process and pinpointing elements for improvement. With a correct understanding of its components, it’s 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 specify that two types of validation need to be performed.
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 suggests we perform validation both before and after the assessment. This article will concentrate on the first type—assessment tool validation.
A Look at the Two Types of Assessment Validation
Defining Assessment Validation
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, or assessment tool validation, relates to the first part of the clause, emphasizing the need to meet all unit requirements and ensuring all workbooks are 100% compliant.
Post-assessment validation, by contrast, focuses on implementation, ensuring Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments in line with the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
Our focus in this article will be on assessment tool validation.
Steps to Perform Assessment Tool Validation
With a grasp of the two validation types, let’s focus on assessment tool validation.
Optimal Timing for Assessment Tool Validation
Assessment tool validation ensures that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are included in your assessment tools.
Thus, whenever new learning resources are purchased, you must conduct assessment tool validation before allowing 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.
However, this isn't the only instance to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:
- you update your resources
- when new training products are added on scope
- course is reviewed against training product updates
- learning resources are identified 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.
Which Training Products to Validate?
Recall, this type of validation aims to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs must validate each unit's resources.
Resources Required for Assessment Tool Validation
Course Materials
For validation of your assessment tools, you will require the full set of your learning resources:
Mapping tool – this is the initial document to review. It identifies which assessment items address unit requirements, speeding up 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 – check that instructions for assessors are adequate and that there are clear benchmarks for each assessment item. Clear benchmarks are essential 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 details the requirements for validation panel members, noting that validation can be conducted by one or more people. Generally, RTOs require participation from all trainers and assessors and may include industry experts.
Overall, your validation panel should have:
Vocational competencies and industry skills relevant to the unit being validated
Current expertise and skills in vocational teaching and learning
Any one of these training and assessment credentials:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or an equivalent successor
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.
Using a validation tool helps in both the validation process and documentation. It facilitates seeing 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.
It also acts as evidence that you have validated your resources prior to 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.
Principles of Assessment Form Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable
While such templates facilitate validation, they often result in judgment errors because there’s insufficient space for comments on each assessment item.
A more detailed template is highly recommended for inspecting each unit requirement and the assessment items that align with them. Below is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Instructions Benchmarks Assessment Tools Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What to Look For?
As stated in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, you must ensure your assessment tools allow trainers to adhere to assessment principles and evidence rules.
Assessment Key Principles
Fairness – Does the assessment process ensure equal opportunity and access for everyone?
Flexibility – Does the assessment accommodate different options to demonstrate competence according to various needs and preferences?
Validity – Does the assessment evaluate what it is intended to evaluate? Is it a valid tool for assessing the required skill or knowledge?
Reliability – Will the assessment give the same results every time, regardless of the trainer? Will different assessors make the same decision here on skill competence?
Key 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 enough to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Is the assessment tool verifying that the work is the candidate’s own?
Currency – Are the assessment tools based on current units of competency and up-to-date 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 fail to meet all unit requirements, 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:
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:
diaper changing
bottle preparation, bottle-feeding babies, and cleaning equipment
solid food preparation and feeding babies
respond suitably to infant signs and cues
prepare and settle infants for sleep
monitor and encourage physical exploration and gross motor skills suitable for the age
Having students describe changing nappies for babies under 12 months doesn’t directly fulfill the unit requirement. Unless it’s intended to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be doing 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.
Mind 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.
Entire or Not Competent
Pay attention to lists. As mentioned earlier, 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?
Provide More Detail
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 details can be included in a work package?
Possible answers may include:
Compulsory resources
Appropriate costs
Length of activities
Specified roles and responsibilities
When an assessment item demands multiple answers, indicate the number of answers a student must provide. This ensures your assessment is reliable, and the evidence collected is valid.
The same is true for assessment items with double-barrelled questions or those asking for multiple answers at once. Such questions can confuse both students and assessors, as demonstrated in the sample question below:
Name a hazard and/or environmental issue in the work area and pick 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 – elimination, isolation, engineering controls
People – isolation, engineering controls, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolating, engineering controls, administration
Equipment or machinery – isolation, use of engineering controls, administrative controls
Avoiding double-barrelled questions makes it easier for students to respond 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.