Navigating Assessment Validation: How to Validate Assessments

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.

Despite our extensive coverage on validation, let's re-examine the term. ASQA states that validation is a quality check 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.

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 necessitate conducting two types of validation.

The first assessment validation type verifies that your RTO's assessments adhere to the training package requirements within your scope.

The second validation ensures assessments are conducted according to the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.

Thus, validation is performed both prior to and following the assessment. The first type, assessment tool validation, is the focus here.

What are the Two Types of Assessment Validation?

Breaking Down 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.

Conversely, post-assessment validation pertains to the implementation, ensuring Registered Training Organisations conduct assessments in line with 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.

Timing of Assessment Tool Validation

Assessment tool validation seeks to ensure all elements, performance criteria, and performance and knowledge evidence are addressed by your assessment tools.

Therefore, any time you obtain new learning resources, assessment tool validation should be completed before students use them.

You don’t have to wait for the next scheduled validation in your 5-year cycle. Validate new resources right away to ensure they are ready for students.

However, this isn't the only instance to conduct this type of validation. Perform assessment tool validation when you:

- resources are updated by you
- new training products are added to your scope
- you review your course against training product updates
- your risk assessment includes identifying your learning resources as a risk

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.

Selecting Training Products for Validation

It's crucial to remember this validation ensures compliance of all learning resources before they are used. All RTOs should validate resources for each unit.

Key Resources for Assessment Tool Validation

Educational Resources

To validate assessment tools, you need the complete suite 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 – check its suitability as an assessment tool during validation. Ensure instructions are clear and answer fields are sufficient. This is a common issue.

Assessor guide/marking guide – ensure that instructions for assessors are sufficient and clear benchmarks for each assessment item are provided. Clear benchmarks are essential 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 outlines the requirements for validation panel members, noting that validation can be done by one or more people. Typically, RTOs require all trainers and assessors to attend and may invite industry experts.

Collectively, your validation panel must have:

Vocational competencies and industry skills relevant to the unit being validated

Up-to-date knowledge and skills related to vocational teaching and learning

Any one of the following 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.
Having a validation tool helps in both the validation process and documentation. It makes it simpler to see how each assessment item aligns with 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.

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

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

Although these templates ease the validation process, they can cause errors in judgment as there is minimal space for commenting on each assessment item.

We highly recommend using a more detailed template to inspect each unit requirement and its corresponding assessment items. Here is an example:

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

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

Assessment Principles
Fairness – Is equal opportunity and access guaranteed for everyone in the assessment process?

Flexibility – Does the assessment provide different options to demonstrate competence according to individual needs and preferences?

Validity – Does the assessment evaluate what it is meant to evaluate? Is it a valid tool for measuring 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?

Basic 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 the evidence enough to confirm the learner has the required skills and knowledge?

Authenticity – Is the assessment tool verifying that the work belongs to the candidate?

Currency – Are the assessment tools reflective of current units of competency and contemporary 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 employing learning resources that fail to meet all unit requirements, be sure to follow these guidelines:

Follow Through with Actions

Pay close 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:

diaper change

bottle preparation, bottle-feeding infants, and cleaning equipment

prepare solid foods and feed babies

respond to infant signs and cues appropriately

prepare infants for sleep and settle them

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

Getting students to describe changing nappies for babies under 12 months doesn’t meet the unit requirement. Unless the requirement assesses underpinning knowledge (i.e., knowledge evidence), students should be performing the tasks.

Keep an Eye on 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 sufficient.

All or Nothing

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?
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 type of information can be included in a work package?

Possible answers include:

Compulsory resources

Corresponding costs

Activity duration

Specified roles and responsibilities

If an assessment item calls for several answers, specify the number of answers needed from a student. This ensures your assessment is website reliable, and the evidence gathered is valid.

This is also true for assessment items with double-barrelled questions or those that require multiple answers at once. These can confuse students and assessors, as demonstrated in the sample question below:

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

Answers could include, but are not limited to:

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

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

People – isolating, use of engineering controls, administration

Structural hazards – substitution, isolation, engineering controls

Chemical hazards – isolating, engineering, administration

Equipment or machinery – isolation, use of engineering controls, administrative controls

Steering clear of double-barrelled questions makes it easier for students to answer and for assessors to accurately judge student competence.

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