Assessment Validation: What You Need to Know to Validate Assessments

Assessment Validation: What You Need to Know to Validate Assessments

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.

We've covered validation in many articles, but it's worth re-examining. ASQA defines it as a quality review of the assessment procedure.

Validation involves checking which aspects of an RTO's assessment process are accurate and identifying areas for improvement. With a solid understanding of its components, validation is less intimidating.

According to Clause 1.8 of the SRTOs 2015, RTOs must ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, comply with the training package requirements and are conducted according to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

According to the standards, two types of validation are necessary.

The first type of validation ensures that your RTO's assessment meets the requirements of the training package within your scope.

The following validation type ensures that assessments follow 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.

What are the Two Types of Assessment Validation?

Exploring the Concept of Assessment Validation

As previously discussed in our blogs, validation involves two processes: (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.

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 in this article will be on assessment tool validation.

How to Properly Conduct Assessment Tool Validation

With a grasp of the two validation types, let’s focus on assessment tool validation.

When to Conduct Assessment Tool Validation

Assessment tool validation is intended to confirm that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are met by your assessment tools.

This means that whenever new learning resources are acquired, you must perform assessment tool validation 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.

Nevertheless, this isn't the only occasion for this type of validation. Conduct assessment tool validation when you:

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

The Australian Skills Quality Authority employs a risk-based approach for regulating RTOs and expects regular risk assessments. Therefore, student complaints about learning resources are an ideal time to conduct assessment tool validation.

Identifying Training Products for Validation

Keep in mind, this validation ensures that all learning resources comply before use. All RTOs must validate resources for each unit.

Necessary Resources for Assessment Tool Validation

Educational Resources

Given that you are validating your assessment tools, you will need the complete array 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 – validate its suitability as an assessment tool. Confirm that instructions are clear and answer fields are sufficient. This is a common problem.

Assessor guide/marking guide – check that there are sufficient instructions for assessors and clear benchmarks for each assessment item. Clear benchmarks are vital for reliable assessment outcomes.

Other related resources – such as checklists, registers, and templates created independently from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to ensure they are suitable for the assessment task and address unit requirements.

Validation Panel

Clause 1.11 outlines the criteria for validation panel members, specifying that validation can be done by one or more people. RTOs typically require all trainers and assessors to participate, occasionally inviting industry experts.

Your validation panel must, as a group, possess:

Relevant vocational competencies and up-to-date industry skills for the unit being validated

Recent knowledge and expertise in vocational teaching and learning

One of these training and assessment qualifications:

TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or the equivalent successor

Validation checklist/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.
Simultaneously, it can serve as proof that you have validated your resources before they are used by students.

ASQA does not specify a recommended or required template for assessment tool validation, but many templates are accessible online. These tools usually have validators review the tools in their entirety to ensure they meet the principles of assessment.

Assessment Principles Form 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 Guidelines Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Needs Review?

As we covered in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, your assessment tools must ensure trainers adhere to assessment principles and evidence rules.

Assessment Core Principles
Fairness – Does the assessment process ensure equal opportunity and access for everyone?

Flexibility – Does the assessment offer multiple ways to show competence according to 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 produce consistent results every time, regardless of who conducts the training? Will different assessors make the same decision on skill competence?

Key Rules of Evidence

Validity – Is the evidence demonstrating 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 website 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 verify that the work is the candidate’s own?

Currency – Are the assessment tools in line with current units of competency and contemporary industry practices?

Even though these are regularly 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:

Practice Your Teachings

Take note of the verbs used in the unit requirements and make sure they are addressed by the assessment item. For instance, 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:

nappying

prepare bottles, feed babies from bottles, and clean equipment

prepare solid foods and feed infants

appropriately respond to baby signs and cues

prepare and settle babies for sleep

monitor and encourage age-appropriate physical exploration and gross motor skills

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.

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.
Pay attention to 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 enough.

Full Compliance 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?
Can You Clarify Further?

Every assessment item must have clear and specific benchmark answers to guide the assessor’s judgment on student competence. Thus, make sure your instructions are not confusing for students or assessors. For example:
What kind of information can be included in a work package?
What sort of information can be included in a work package?

Answers can include:

Mandatory resources

Appropriate costs

Time assigned for activities

Appointed roles and responsibilities

When an assessment item requires multiple answers, specify how many answers a student must provide. This way, your assessment remains reliable, and the evidence collected is valid.

This applies equally to assessment items with double-barrelled questions or questions that require more than one answer at the same time. These can confuse students and assessors, as illustrated in the example below:

Identify a hazard and/or environmental issue in the work area and select the most effective hazard control hierarchy.

Possible answers include, but are not limited to:

Weather conditions – work area isolation, engineering controls, personal protective equipment

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

People – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration

Structural hazards – substitution, isolating, engineering controls

Chemical hazards – isolation, use of engineering controls, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolating, engineering, administration

Steering clear of double-barrelled questions simplifies responses for students and enables assessors to accurately judge competence.

Seeing these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers offer audit guarantees?” However, with such guarantees, you must wait for an audit to rectify noncompliance. This affects your compliance history, so it’s better to take a safe and compliant route.