Assessment Validation Explained: Methods to Validate Assessments
Assessment Validation Explained: Methods to Validate Assessments
Blog Article
Registration brings RTOs many duties like annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, yet validation often proves to be the most feared.
Although our articles cover validation extensively, let’s redefine it. According to ASQA, validation is a quality review of the assessment process.
To put it differently, validation is the process of confirming the accurate parts of an RTO's assessment process and identifying what can be enhanced. A correct understanding of its components makes it less intimidating.
Clause 1.8 of the SRTOs 2015 mandates that RTOs ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, are compliant with training package requirements and adhere to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
As per the standards, two kinds of validation are required.
The initial assessment validation ensures your RTO's assessments comply with the training package requirements.
The second validation type ensures that assessments adhere to the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.
This means we validate assessments both before and after they are conducted. This article will cover the first type—assessment tool validation.
The Two Types of Assessment Validation Explained
Assessment Validation Explained
As discussed earlier and in our prior blogs, validation involves two parts: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Assessment tool validation, also known as pre-assessment validation or verification, pertains to the first part of the clause, focusing on ensuring all unit requirements are met and that all workbooks are fully compliant.
On the other hand, post-assessment validation deals with implementation, ensuring Registered Training Organisations follow the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
Our focus here will be on assessment tool validation.
How to Conduct Assessment Tool Validation
Now that we understand the two types of validation, let’s explore the details of assessment tool validation.
Appropriate Times for Assessment Tool Validation
Assessment tool validation ensures that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are included in your assessment tools.
This means that whenever new learning resources are acquired, you must perform assessment tool validation before 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.
Nonetheless, there are other reasons to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:
- you update your resources
- new training products get added on scope
- course is reviewed against training product updates
- your risk assessment includes identifying your learning resources as a risk
ASQA's risk-based regulation approach means RTOs should perform regular risk assessments. If students complain about learning resources, it's a perfect time for assessment tool validation.
What Training Products Should Be Validated?
Keep in mind, this validation ensures compliance of all learning resources before use. All RTOs must validate resources for each unit.
Assessment Tool Validation: Required Resources
Learning Resources
Since you are conducting assessment tool validation, you will need the entire suite 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 – check its suitability as an assessment tool during validation. Ensure instructions are clear and answer fields are sufficient. This is a common issue.
Assessor guide/marking guide – verify that instructions for assessors are comprehensive and clear benchmarks for each assessment item are present. Clear benchmarks are key to 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.
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:
Vocational competencies and current industry skills that relate to the unit being validated
Current knowledge and skills in vocational teaching and learning
Any one of these training and assessment credentials:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its replacement
Validation instrument/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.
Additionally, it can act as evidence that you have validated your resources before they are used by students.
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 Guide Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable
Although these templates ease the validation process, they can cause errors in judgment as there is minimal space for commenting on each assessment item.
We strongly recommend using a more detailed template to inspect each unit requirement and the assessment items that map to them. Here is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Guidelines Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Needs Checking?
As mentioned in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, you need to ensure that your assessment tools allow trainers to follow assessment principles and evidence rules.
Assessment Basic Principles
Fairness – Does the assessment ensure equal opportunity and access for everyone?
Flexibility – Does the assessment provide multiple options to show competence according to various needs and preferences?
Validity – Is the assessment assessing what it is intended to assess? Is it a valid tool for evaluating 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 more info skill competence?
Evidence Basic Rules
Validity – Does the evidence show 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 the evidence enough to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?
Authenticity – Is the assessment tool verifying that the work belongs to the candidate?
Currency – Do the assessment tools reflect current units of competency and modern industry practices?
Although these are often 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:
Demonstrate What You Teach
Observe 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 requires students to:
Complete 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:
diapering
prepare bottle, bottle feed babies and clean equipment
solid foods preparation and feeding babies
appropriately respond to baby signs and cues
prepare and settle infants for rest
monitor and foster physical exploration and gross motor skills appropriate for the age
Having students explain the process of nappy changing for babies under 12 months old doesn’t fulfill the unit requirement. Unless it’s intended to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be carrying out the tasks.
Look Out for 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 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 meet the requirement.
Full Compliance or Not Competent
Observe the lists. As noted above, if students are asked to 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?
Give More Specificity
Each assessment item should have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the student’s competence. Therefore, 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 details can be included in a work package?
The answer may include:
Obligatory resources
Appropriate costs
Duration 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 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 issue in the work area and pick the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Answers could include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering, personal protective equipment
Work area and ground conditions – elimination, isolation, use of engineering controls
People – isolation, engineering controls, administrative controls
Structural hazards – substituting, isolation, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolation, engineering, administrative controls
Equipment or machinery – isolation, engineering, administration
Steering clear of double-barrelled questions simplifies responses for students and enables assessors to accurately judge competence.
Considering these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers have audit guarantees?” However, such guarantees require you to wait for an audit to rectify noncompliance. This affects your compliance history, so it’s better to take a safe and compliant approach.