Comprehensive Insights on Assessment Validation and Validating Assessments

Comprehensive Insights on Assessment Validation and Validating Assessments

Blog Article

Post-registration, RTOs are tasked with many responsibilities including annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, and validation is often the most challenging.

Although we have published several articles on validation, let’s revisit the term. ASQA describes 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.

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.

The standards require RTOs to perform two types of validation.

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 suggests we perform validation both before and after the assessment. This article will concentrate on the first type—assessment tool validation.

The Two Types of Assessment Validation Explained

The Fundamentals of 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, also referred to as assessment tool validation, is related to the first part of the clause, ensuring all unit requirements are addressed and workbooks are entirely compliant.

Post-assessment validation, in contrast, is about ensuring the implementation side, where Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments according to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

This discussion will center around assessment tool validation.

How Assessment Tool Validation is Conducted

Having distinguished between the two types of validation, let’s dive into the details of assessment tool validation.

When to Conduct Assessment Tool Validation

Assessment tool validation ensures that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are addressed by your assessment tools.

Hence, whenever new learning resources are bought, assessment tool validation is necessary before student use.

No need to wait for the next validation schedule in your 5-year cycle. Validate new resources immediately to ensure they’re suitable for students.

Nonetheless, there are other reasons to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:

- updating your resources
- your new training products get added on scope
- course gets reviewed against training product updates
- when learning resources are identified as a risk during your risk assessment

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 Need Validation?

Remember, this type of validation is to ensure all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs should validate all unit resources.

Assessment Tool Validation: Required Resources

Learning Materials

For validating your assessment tools, you will need the full array of your learning resources:

Mapping tool – the primary document to check. It reveals which assessment items align with unit requirements, expediting validation.

Learner/student workbook – validate its suitability as an assessment tool. Ensure instructions are clear and answer fields are adequate. This is a frequent gap.

Assessor guide/marking guide – ensure that instructions for assessors are sufficient and clear benchmarks for each assessment item exist. 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 of Validators

Clause 1.11 describes the requirements for validation panel members, stating that validation can be conducted by one or more individuals. RTOs often require all trainers and assessors to be present, occasionally including industry experts.

Overall, your validation panel should have:

Vocational competencies and current industry skills applicable to the unit being validated

Recent knowledge and expertise in vocational teaching and learning

Any of the following training and assessment credentials:

TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or an updated successor

Assessment 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 supports the validation process and documentation. It simplifies understanding 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.
Additionally, it serves as documented proof that you have validated your resources before student use.

Although ASQA does not recommend or require a particular template for assessment tool validation, many templates are available online. These tools typically have validators review the tools in their entirety to determine if they meet the principles of assessment.

Assessment Principles Guide Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable

Though these templates make validation easier, they can lead to judgment errors because they provide little room for comments on each assessment item.

A more detailed template is recommended to thoroughly inspect each unit requirement and the assessment items that align with them. Below is an example:

Element Performance Criteria Assessment Guidelines Standards Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Needs Checking?

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.

Basic Principles of Assessment
Fairness – Is the assessment process equitable and accessible to everyone?

Flexibility – Are various options provided in the assessment to demonstrate competence based on different needs and preferences?

Validity – Does the assessment measure what it is supposed to measure? Is it a valid tool for evaluating 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?

Fundamental Rules of Evidence

Validity – Is the evidence confirming that 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 confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?

Authenticity – Is the assessment tool ensuring that the work is the candidate’s own?

Currency – Do the assessment tools reflect current units of competency and modern industry practices?

Although these are commonly addressed in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, a lot of tools still fail to meet these requirements.

To avoid employing learning resources that fail to meet all unit requirements, be sure to follow these guidelines:

Demonstrate What You Teach

Pay attention to 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 requires website 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:

changing diapers

prepare bottles, bottle-feed babies and sanitize equipment

prepare solid foods and feed infants

respond properly to infant signs and cues

settle infants for sleep and prepare them

monitor and support 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.

Notice 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.

Full Compliance or Not Competent

Mind the lists. In the previous example, 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?
Add More Specificity

Each assessment item should have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on the student’s competence. Hence, 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 sort of information can be included in a work package?

The answer may include:

Required materials

Related costs

Length of activities

Allocated 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:

Name a hazard and/or environmental concern in the work area and choose the most effective hazard control hierarchy.

Answers can include, but are not limited to:

Weather conditions – isolation of the work area, engineering, personal protective equipment

Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolation, use of engineering controls

People – isolating, engineering controls, administration

Structural hazards – substitution, isolation, engineering controls

Chemical hazards – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolation, engineering controls, administration

Avoiding double-barrelled questions simplifies responses for students and allows assessors to accurately judge student competence.

Considering these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers have audit guarantees?” But such guarantees require you to wait for an audit before rectifying noncompliance. This affects your compliance history, so it’s better to take a safe and compliant route.