Assessment Validation Overview: Steps to Validate Assessments

Assessment Validation Overview: Steps to Validate Assessments

Blog Article

With registration, RTOs must juggle many responsibilities like annual declarations, AVETMISS reporting, and marketing compliance, where validation often causes the most anxiety.

Though we've written extensively on validation, let's clarify it again. ASQA describes it as a quality assessment review.

Put simply, validation checks which parts of an RTO's assessment process are accurate and spots areas for enhancement. A proper understanding of its main elements can make validation less daunting.

As stated in Clause 1.8 of the SRTOs 2015, RTOs must ensure their assessment systems, including RPL, comply with the training package requirements and adhere to the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

The standards mandate two types of validation.

The first validation type ensures your RTO's assessments comply with the training package requirements in your scope.

The second kind of validation ensures assessments are carried out in accordance with the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.

It suggests that validation takes place before and after the assessment. This article focuses on the first type—assessment tool validation.

Defining the Two Types of Assessment Validation

Assessment Validation Explained

As discussed before and in previous blogs, validation includes two processes: (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.

In post-assessment validation, the emphasis is on implementation, ensuring that Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments as per the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

We will dedicate this article to assessment tool validation.

Steps for Conducting Assessment Tool Validation

Now that we’ve differentiated the two types of validation, let’s examine assessment tool validation in detail.

Best Times to Conduct 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 means that whenever new learning resources are acquired, you must perform assessment tool validation before student use.

You don’t need to wait until the next scheduled validation in your 5-year cycle. Immediately validate new resources to ensure they’re ready for student use.

Yet, this is not the only occasion to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:

- resources are updated by you
- add new training products on scope
- course is reviewed against training product updates
- learning resources are identified as a risk during the risk assessment

The Australian Skills Quality Authority's risk-based regulatory approach means RTOs should conduct regular risk assessments. Complaints from students about learning resources are a prime opportunity for assessment tool validation.

How to Choose Training Products for Validation

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

Resources Required for Assessment Tool Validation

Study Resources

For validation of your assessment tools, you will require the full set of your learning resources:

Mapping tool – begin with this document. It details which assessment items correspond to unit requirements, aiding faster 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 – verify that instructions for assessors are comprehensive and clear benchmarks for each assessment item are included. Clear benchmarks are key to reliable assessment outcomes.

Other related resources – such as checklists, registers, and templates developed separately from the workbook and marking guide. Ensure they are suitable for the assessment task and address unit requirements.

Team for Validation

Clause 1.11 defines the requirements for validation panel members, stating validation can involve one or more individuals. RTOs usually require all trainers and assessors to be present, sometimes including industry experts.

As a group, your validation panel must possess:

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

Current knowledge and skills in vocational teaching and learning

Any of the following training and assessment credentials:

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.
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.
Simultaneously, it provides documentation that you have validated your resources before students use them.

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 Checklist Yes/No/Partially Comments
1. Fair
2. Flexible
3. Valid
4. Reliable

Although such templates ease validation, they can cause judgment errors since there’s minimal space for comments on each assessment item.

It is highly advisable to use a more detailed template for evaluating each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Below is an example:

Element Performance Criteria Assessment Instructions Benchmarks Assessment Instrument Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Needs Inspection?

As outlined in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, your assessment tools must ensure trainers follow assessment principles and evidence rules.

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

Flexibility – Are different options available in the assessment to demonstrate competence based on individual 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 achieve consistent results every time, no matter who conducts the training? Will different assessors consistently decide on skill competence?

Key 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 sufficient evidence 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 – Do the assessment tools reflect current units of competency and modern industry practices?

Despite these being frequently addressed in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, heaps of tools still have problems with these requirements.

To avoid employing learning resources that leave unit requirements unmet, be sure to follow these guidelines:

Act on 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 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:

nappy changing

prepare bottles, bottle feed infants, and clean equipment

solid foods preparation and feeding babies

respond to baby signs and cues suitably

prepare babies for sleep and settle them

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

Having students describe changing nappies for babies under 12 months doesn’t directly address the unit requirement. Unless it’s meant to assess underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be performing the tasks.

Plurals Matter!
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 asks 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.

Complete Compliance or Not Competent

Observe the lists. As illustrated above, 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 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 kind of information can be included in a work package?

The answer may website include:

Obligatory resources

Pertinent costs

Length of activities

Designated duties and responsibilities

When an assessment item calls for multiple answers, indicate the number of answers a student needs to provide. This way, your assessment is reliable, and the evidence gathered is valid.

This is also true for assessment items with double-barrelled questions or questions that require more than one answer at once. 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.

Possible answers could include, but are not limited to:

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

Work area and ground conditions – eliminating hazards, isolating, engineering

People – isolation, engineering controls, administration

Structural hazards – substituting, isolation, engineering controls

Chemical hazards – isolation, engineering controls, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolation, engineering, administration

Avoiding double-barrelled questions makes it easier for students to answer and for assessors to judge competence accurately.

Given these requirements, you might wonder, “Don’t learning resource developers provide audit guarantees?” However, these guarantees require waiting for an audit to rectify noncompliance. This impacts your compliance history, so it’s better to take a safe and compliant route.