The Essentials of Assessment Validation: Guide to Validating Assessments

The Essentials of Assessment Validation: Guide to Validating 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 have numerous articles on validation, but let's go back to the term itself. ASQA defines validation as a quality review of the assessment process.

Validation is essentially about verifying the accuracy of parts of an RTO's assessment process and spotting areas needing improvement. Understanding its key components can make it less daunting.

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.

We must adhere to the standards by conducting two types of validation.

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

The following validation type ensures that assessments follow 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

An Overview of Assessment Validation

As discussed earlier and in our prior blogs, validation involves 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.

In contrast, post-assessment validation focuses on the implementation, requiring Registered Training Organisations to 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 reviewed the two types of validation, let’s dive into the specifics of assessment tool validation.

When Assessment Tool Validation Should Be Done

The goal of assessment tool validation is to make sure all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are addressed by your assessment tools.

Thus, whenever new learning resources are purchased, you must conduct assessment tool validation before allowing student use.

There's no need to wait for your next 5-year cycle validation schedule. Validate new resources immediately to ensure they are suitable for student use.

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

- you update resources
- your new training products get added on scope
- course is reviewed against training product updates
- learning resources are identified as a risk during the risk assessment

The risk-based regulatory approach of ASQA requires RTOs to perform regular risk assessments. Student complaints about learning resources indicate it's time for assessment tool validation.

Which Training Products Should You Validate?

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

Academic Resources

Given that you are validating your assessment tools, you will need the complete array of your learning resources:

Mapping tool – this should be the first document to examine. It shows which assessment items correspond to unit requirements, facilitating quicker validation.

Learner/student workbook – ensure it's appropriate as an assessment tool. Check if the instructions are clear and answer fields are adequate. This is a frequent issue.

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 – might include checklists, registers, and templates developed independently from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to confirm they fit the assessment task and address unit requirements.

Validation Committee

Clause 1.11 sets out the requirements for validation panel members, stating that validation can be conducted by one or more individuals. RTOs generally require all trainers and assessors to be involved, sometimes including industry experts.

Your validation panel must, as a group, possess:

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 its updated version

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 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.
Additionally, it serves as documented proof that you have validated your resources before 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.

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 Instructions Benchmarks Assessment Tools Rectification Recommendations
What do you Need to Check?
What Should Be Checked?

As detailed in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, it is crucial that your assessment tools enable trainers to adhere to assessment principles and evidence rules.

Essential Principles of Assessment
Fairness – Does the assessment provide equal opportunity and access to all participants?

Flexibility – Does the assessment provide multiple options to show competence according to various needs and preferences?

Validity – Does the assessment evaluate what it is intended to evaluate? Is it a valid tool for assessing website the required skill or knowledge?

Reliability – Will the assessment give the same results every time, regardless of the trainer? Will different assessors make the same decision on skill competence?

Key Rules of Evidence

Validity – Is the evidence verifying 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 – Does the assessment tool ensure that the work is the candidate’s own?

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

Despite being frequently covered in VET professional development and nationally recognised training, many tools still have issues with these requirements.

To avoid using learning resources that do not address all unit requirements, ensure you follow these guidelines:

Live Up to 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 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:

nappy change

prepare bottles, bottle feed infants, and clean equipment

solid food prep and feeding babies

respond properly to infant signs and cues

prepare infants for sleep and settle them

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

Getting students to describe the nappy-changing process for babies under 12 months old doesn’t directly meet the unit requirement. Unless the requirement assesses underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be doing 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 requires 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.

All or Not Competent

Pay attention to lists. Again, as illustrated above, 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?
Could You Be Clearer?

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

Answers can include:

Needed resources

Associated expenses

Activity length

Allocated 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 concern in the work area and select the most effective hazard control hierarchy.

Answers might include, but are not limited to:

Weather conditions – isolating the work area, engineering, personal protective equipment

Work area and ground conditions – elimination, isolating, engineering controls

People – isolating, use of engineering controls, administrative controls

Structural hazards – substituting, isolation, engineering

Chemical hazards – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolation, engineering controls, administrative controls

Steering clear of double-barrelled questions makes it simpler for students to respond and for assessors to judge competence accurately.

Seeing these requirements, you might think, “Don’t learning resource developers offer audit guarantees?” But such guarantees mean you must wait for an audit before rectifying noncompliance. This affects your compliance history, so it’s wiser to take the safe and compliant route.