An Introduction to Assessment Validation: Validating Assessments Explained
An Introduction to Assessment Validation: Validating Assessments Explained
Blog Article
RTOs have numerous responsibilities post-registration, including annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and ensuring marketing compliance. Among these tasks, validation often stands out as particularly challenging.
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.
According to SRTOs 2015 Clause 1.8, RTOs must ensure that their assessment systems, including RPL, comply with training package requirements and adhere to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
We are required by the standards to carry out two types of validation.
The first type of validation ensures that your RTO's assessment meets the requirements of the training package within your scope.
The next validation ensures that assessments are conducted per 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.
What are the Two Types of Assessment Validation?
Assessment Validation: What It Is
As mentioned earlier and in our earlier blog entries, validation is divided into two parts: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.
Pre-assessment validation or assessment tool validation focuses on the first part of the clause, ensuring that all unit requirements are met and that workbooks are entirely compliant.
On the implementation side, post-assessment validation ensures Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments according to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.
This article will focus on assessment tool validation.
Conducting Assessment Tool Validation
Having outlined the two types of validation, it’s time to dive into assessment tool validation.
Timing of 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 implies that any time new learning resources are obtained, assessment tool validation must be done before student use.
You don’t have to wait for the next scheduled validation in your 5-year cycle. Validate new resources right away to ensure they are ready for students.
Still, this isn't the only reason for this type of validation. Conduct assessment tool validation when you:
- resources are updated
- 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 requires RTOs to conduct regular risk assessments. Therefore, complaints from students about learning resources are a perfect time for assessment tool validation.
Identifying Training Products for Validation
Bear in mind, this validation aims to ensure compliance of all learning resources before use. All RTOs are required to validate all unit resources.
Starting Assessment Tool Validation: What You Need
Academic Resources
To validate assessment tools, you need the complete 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 – assess its appropriateness for use as an assessment tool. Verify clear instructions and adequate answer fields. This is often a 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 – 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.
Team for Validation
Clause 1.11 describes the requirements for validation panel members, indicating that validation can be performed by one or more persons. RTOs often require all trainers and assessors to attend, and sometimes industry experts are invited.
The members of your validation panel must collectively have:
Vocational competencies and current industry skills that relate to the unit being validated
Recent knowledge and expertise in vocational teaching and learning
Any one of the following training and assessment qualifications:
TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its equivalent
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.
Having a validation tool aids both the validation process and documentation. It simplifies seeing how each assessment item maps to 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.
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 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 advisable to use a more detailed template to inspect each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Below is an example:
Element Performance Criteria Assessment Directions Benchmarks Assessment Tools Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What to Look For?
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 – Does the assessment ensure equal opportunity and access for 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 yield the same results every time, no matter who conducts the training? Will different assessors make the same decision on 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 there adequate evidence to ensure 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 reflective of current units of competency and contemporary industry practices?
Although these are regularly covered in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, numerous tools still struggle to meet these requirements.
To avoid using learning resources that do not address all unit requirements, ensure you follow these guidelines:
Practice What You Preach
Observe the verbs in the unit requirements and ensure they are addressed by the assessment item. For instance, in the unit CHCECE032 Nurture babies and toddlers, one performance evidence requirement asks students to:
Perform 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 in accordance with service and regulatory requirements:
changing diapers
prepare bottles, bottle feed infants, and clean equipment
prepare solid foods and feed infants
respond suitably to infant signs and cues
settle infants for sleep and prepare them
monitor and foster age-appropriate physical exploration and gross motor skills
Having students describe the nappy-changing process for babies under 12 months old doesn’t directly meet the unit requirement. Unless the unit requirement is meant to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be performing the tasks.
Heed 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 asks students to complete the tasks at least once with two different babies under 12 months old. Doing the tasks twice with one baby won’t suffice.
Total 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?
Be Clearer
Each assessment item must include clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the check here student’s competence. Hence, ensure your instructions are clear and not confusing for 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?
Answers might include:
Essential resources
Relevant expenses
Time span of activities
Assigned 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 those that ask for multiple answers simultaneously. Such questions can confuse both students and assessors, as illustrated in the example below:
Name a hazard and/or environmental issue in the workplace and choose the most effective hazard control hierarchy.
Answers could include, but are not limited to:
Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering controls, PPE
Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolation, engineering
People – isolating, engineering controls, administration
Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls
Chemical hazards – isolating, engineering controls, administration
Equipment or machinery – isolation, use of engineering controls, administration
Steering clear of double-barrelled questions makes it simpler for students to respond and for assessors to judge competence accurately.
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.