An Expert Guide to Assessment Validation: Validating Assessments

An Expert Guide to Assessment Validation: 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 our articles cover validation extensively, let’s redefine it. According to ASQA, validation is a quality review of the assessment process.

Validation is the process of confirming accurate areas in an RTO's assessment process and pinpointing elements for improvement. With a correct understanding of its components, it’s less daunting.

The SRTOs 2015 Clause 1.8 specifies that RTOs need to ensure compliance of their assessment systems, including RPL, with training package requirements, following the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

As per the standards, two kinds of validation are required.

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

The next validation ensures that assessments are conducted per the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.

This shows that validation happens pre- and post-assessment. We will focus on the first type—assessment tool validation.

The Fundamentals of the Two Types of Assessment Validation

Breaking Down Assessment Validation

As mentioned earlier and in one of our previous blog posts, validation is split into two stages: (1) assessment tool validation and (2) post-assessment validation.

Assessment tool validation, sometimes called pre-assessment validation, focuses on ensuring all unit requirements are met, in line with the first part of the clause, ensuring complete workbook compliance.

Conversely, post-assessment validation focuses on the implementation side, ensuring Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments in line with the Principles of Assessment and Rules of Evidence.

Here, we will concentrate on assessment tool validation.

Procedure for Assessment Tool Validation

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

When is Assessment Tool Validation Conducted?

Assessment tool validation is intended to confirm that all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are met 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 need to wait until your next 5-year validation schedule. Immediately validate new resources to ensure they’re ready for student use.

However, this isn't the only time to perform this type of validation. Conduct assessment tool validation also when you:

- you update resources
- add new training products on scope
- review your course against training product updates
- when learning resources are identified as a risk during your risk assessment

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.

Training Products to Validate

It's important to remember this validation ensures that all learning resources are compliant before use. All RTOs need to validate resources for each unit.

Necessary Resources for Assessment Tool Validation

Course Materials

Since you are validating your assessment tools, you will require the entire suite of your learning resources:

Mapping tool – the first document you should look at. It highlights which assessment items meet unit requirements, accelerating 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 – 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 – could include checklists, registers, and templates developed apart from the workbook and marking guide. Validate them to confirm they fit the assessment task and meet unit requirements.

Validation Team

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.

Overall, your validation panel should have:

Vocational competencies and industry skills pertinent to the unit being validated

Recent expertise and skills in vocational teaching and learning

Either one of the following training and assessment credentials:

TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its future version

Validation instrument/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 provides documentation that you have validated your resources before students use them.

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

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

We strongly suggest using a more detailed template to evaluate each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Here is an example:

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

As mentioned in our blog post Common Problems In Assessment Tools, you need to ensure that your assessment tools allow trainers to follow assessment principles and evidence rules.

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

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

Validity – Is the assessment assessing what it is intended to assess? Is it a valid tool for evaluating 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?

Key Rules of Evidence

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 – Do the assessment tools align with current units of competency and up-to-date industry practices?

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

To avoid using learning resources that leave certain unit requirements unaddressed, ensure you adhere to these guidelines:

Show What You Mean

Pay attention to the verbs in the unit requirements and ensure they are addressed by the assessment item. For example, in the unit CHCECE032 Nurture babies and toddlers, one performance evidence requirement asks students to:

Complete 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 according to service and regulatory requirements:

nappy changing

prepare bottles, bottle feed infants, and clean equipment

prepare solid food and feed babies

respond to infant signs and cues appropriately

prepare and settle infants for rest

monitor and foster physical exploration and gross motor skills appropriate for the age

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.

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.
Pay attention to the numbers. In our CHCECE032 example, one unit requirement requires students Assessment tool validation Australia 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.

Entire or Not Competent

Mind the lists. In the previous example, 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?
Could You Be Clearer?

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

The answer might include:

Essential resources

Appropriate costs

Activity length

Assigned duties and responsibilities

When an assessment item requires multiple answers, indicate the number of answers needed from a student. This way, your assessment is reliable, and the evidence collected is valid.

The same applies to assessment items with double-barrelled questions or those asking for multiple answers simultaneously. These can confuse both students and assessors, as shown in the sample question below:

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

Answers may include, but are not necessarily limited to:

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

Work area and ground conditions – elimination, isolation, engineering

People – isolation, engineering controls, administrative controls

Structural hazards – substituting, isolation, use of engineering controls

Chemical hazards – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolating, engineering controls, administration

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

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