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Where will the design and development of assessment tools be 1 year from now?

In years gone by, assessment design and development was not a requirement for Trainers and Assessors. It generally sat with a group of skilled people who understood the training package in context and created comprehensive assessment tools to meet this criteria. In April 2016, The Training and Education (TAE) Training Package was updated to include, ’Design and develop assessment tools’ and, ‘Address adult language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) skills’ units. By April 2019, all Trainers and Assessors must hold the new Cert IV in Training and Assessment (TAE40116) or gap skill where applicable. For more information on this, check the units of competency on training.gov.au or with Velg Training or MySkills.

As designing and developing of assessment tools is a hot topic, we thought we’d show you how easy it is to create assessments in Cloud Assess. Furthermore, features that support your compliance obligations allowing you to effortlessly follow the Rules of Evidence and the Principals of Assessment.

Creating Assessment Instruments and Tools

Cloud Assess is an online assessment and training solution. It specifically supports RTOs to author, assess, manage and control their assessment requirements in line with the standards.

Cloud Assess supports any evidence gathering assessment type and allows you to create instruments for, Observation based methods such as practical assessments, Questioning such as recording verbal questioning to mitigate LLN issues, or Portfolios such as log books and so on.

You can even work in RPL mode to gather a range of evidence such as interviews, reports and proof of prior learning.

When using Cloud Assess you don’t only get the experience and interaction gains of an LMS, but also the VET aligned features that support quality assessment practices.

When designing you can use rich text boxes, multiple choice, sketch pads, audio, video, checkboxes, auto-marking and more. Marking can be made relatively easy by including outcome fields throughout your assessment.

The application of sketch pads can be for drawings or for marking up a diagram i.e. showing where Personal Protection Equipment is missing as in this example:

You can create an Observation Checklist in Cloud Assess with great ease and flexibility. It can be applied using a phone, tablet or computer when assessing a student face-to-face. When designing, forget seperate facilitator guides. You can build clear Assessor Instructions, where applicable, to ensure reliability of the instrument. This information is not part of the student’s view. All the evidence can then be gathered and instantly stored in the cloud as per your requirements.

The different views are prescribed by user type. The left shows the Student’s view and the right shows the Assessor’s view.

Map as you build

When designing assessments it is essential that the created content is aligned with the unit of competency to ensure all requirements are covered and in-line with the Elements and Performance Criteria.

The unit of competency and related information is pulled from training.gov.au and when an assessment is designed and built you can map the elements or requirements to components of your instrument.

When reviewing your assessments under a unit you can conduct a Gap Analysis to make sure you have everything covered and to ensure you are not overassessing (or even worse, under-assessing!)

The image above shows how you would perform a gap analysis with numbers 1-5 indicating your assessment instruments.

The Department of Fire and Emergency were amazed at how easy it is to use the Mapping tool in Cloud Assess. The Manager for Quality Assurance, Christine Caughey stated after implementation, “We identified where there was over assessment occurring and reduced the number of assessments by 25%. This also enabled us to simply identify where there were any remaining gaps and so quickly build in questions and tasks to deal with them.”

Align with the Principals of Assessment and the Rules of Evidence

Unlike a generic LMS, Cloud Assess has built-in functionality that supports RTOs in applying,

The Principals of Assessment:

Fairness, Flexibility, Validity and Reliability, and

The Rules of Evidence:

Valid, Authentic, Current, Sufficient

RTOs love that when they use Cloud Assess they can easily adjust the way an assessment is delivered across a number of contexts to ensure flexibility. Modifying assessments to ensure fairness is simple too. Here are some reasonable adjustments that can be easily created with Cloud Assess:

Insert a digital sketchpad into the assessment. This is user-friendly and easily captures a diagram rather than requiring the student to draw something on paper or upload an attachment.

Request a 20 second video or audio recording to replace a 200 word written answer. This is a great way to support students with LLN needs.

Each Record and Student has a timeline, a historical and chronological list of actions and activities indicating the currency and sufficiency of the evidence.

Insert signature fields whenever possible for both the Assessor and Student to make a declaration and support authenticity.

Cloud Assess also comes with the Stats feature. This is live data across all of your assessors and assessments showing the outcome rates. It provides a source of information to indicate the reliability of your assessments and highlights opportunities to make adjustments. With Cloud Assess it is really easy to drill down to the detail and record continuous improvement notes as you go.

Richard Seaborn, Director from WH&S More Skills, saw the need to go digital and remove paper from his RTO. When his clients saw Cloud Assess and the way it  connected the assessment process they described it as, “The future of assessment.”

Who knows, 1 year from now, this could be how you design and develop your assessments.

For more information click here (you can hyperlink to this address): https://www.cloudassess.com.au/principles-of-assessment-rules-of-evidence or call 1300 00 ASSESS

Date posted Feb 7, 2019