1. TVET Australia
Assessment, validation and
moderation
A power point presentation developed by the NQC to
support information sessions on assessment, validation and
moderation

2. Contact
NQC Secretariat
TVET Australia
Level 22/ 390 St Kilda Road Melbourne Vic 3004
Telephone: +61 3 9832 8100
Email: nqc.secretariat@tvetaustralia.com.au
Web: www.nqc.tvetaustralia.com.au

3. Disclaimer
This work has been produced on behalf of the National
Quality Council with funding provided through the Australian
Government Department of Education, Employment and
Workplace Relations and state and territory governments.
The views expressed in this work are not necessarily those
of the Australian Government or state and territory
governments

4. Acknowledgement
This presentation was designed to support the interactive
information sessions that formed part of the NQC’s
communication and dissemination strategy: NQC products:
validation and communication. Reports and materials which
focus on validation and moderation may be downloaded
from the NQC website at
http:www.nqwc.tvetaustralia.com.au/nqc_publications
This work was produced for the National Quality Council by
Andrea Bateman, Quorum QA Australia Pty Ltd
Chloe Dyson, Quorum QA Australia Pty Ltd

5. Validation
 Validation is a quality review process. It involves
checking that the assessment tool produced
valid, reliable, sufficient, current and authentic
evidence to enable reasonable judgements to be
made as to whether the requirements of the
relevant aspects of the Training Package or
accredited course had been met. It includes
reviewing and making recommendations for
future improvements to the assessment
tool, process and/or outcomes.
NQC Implementation Guide: Validation and Moderation 2009

6. Outcomes of validation
Recommendations for future improvements
 Context and conditions for the assessment
 Task/s to be administered to the candidates
 Administration instructions
 Criteria used for judging the quality of performance
(e.g. the decision making rules, evidence requirements
etc)
 Guidelines for making reasonable adjustments to the
way in which the evidence of performance was
gathered to ensure that the expected standard of
performance specified within the Unit(s) of
Competency has not been altered
 Recording and reporting requirements.

7. Moderation
 Moderation is the process of bringing
assessment judgements and standards into
alignment. It is a process that ensures the same
standards are applied to all assessment results
within the same Unit(s) of Competency. It is an
active process in the sense that adjustments to
assessor judgements are made to overcome
differences in the difficulty of the tool and/or the
severity of judgements.
NQC Implementation Guide: Validation and Moderation 2009

8. Outcomes of moderation
 Recommendations for future improvement and
adjustments to assessor judgements (if required)
and
 Recommendations for improvement to the
assessment tools
 Adjusting the results of a specific cohort of
candidates prior to the finalisation of results and
 Requesting copies of final candidate assessment
results in accordance with recommended actions.

9. Validation vs Moderation
Features Validation Moderation
Assessment Quality Review Quality Control
Quality
Management
Type
Primary Purpose Continuous improvement Bring judgements and
standards into alignment.
Timing On-going Prior to the finalisation of
candidate results
Focus Assessment tools; and Assessment tools, and;
Candidate Evidence Candidate Evidence,
(including including assessor
assessor judgements) judgements (mandatory)
(desirable only)
Type of Assessor Partnerships Consensus Meetings
Approaches Consensus Meetings External (moderators or
External (validators or panels)

10. Types of Approaches - Statistical
 Limited to moderation
 Yet to be pursued at the national level in VET
 Requires some form of common assessment task at the national
level
 Adjusts level and spread of RTO based assessments to match the
level and spread of the same candidates scores on a common
assessment task
 Maintains RTO-based rank ordering but brings the distribution of
scores across groups of candidates into alignment
Strength
 Strongest form of quality control
Weakness
 Lacks face validity, may have limited content validity

11. Types of Approaches - External
 Types
 Site Visit Versus
 Central Agency
Strengths
 Offer authoritative interpretations of standards
 Improve consistency of standards across locations by
identifying local bias and/or misconceptions (if any)
 Educative
Weakness
 Expensive
 Less control than statistical

12. Types of Approaches – Assessor
Partnerships
 Validation only
 Informal, self-managed, collegial
 Small group of assessors
 May involve:
 Sharing, discussing and/or reviewing one another’s tools
and/or judgements
 Benefit
 Low costs, personally empowering, non-threatening
 May be easily organised
 Weakness
 Potential to reinforce misconceptions and mistakes
Ref: Implementation Guide, Assessment Fact

13. Types of Approaches -
Consensus
 Typically involves reviewing their own & colleagues assessment
tools and judgements as a group
 Can occur within and/or across organisations
 Strength
 Professional development, networking, promotes collegiality
and sharing
 Weakness
 Less quality control than external and statistical approaches as
they can also be influenced by local values and expectations
 Requires a culture of sharing

14. Systematic Validation
(consensus)
Indicators Yes/No Action
Is there a plan for assessment validation (including validation of
RPL assessment) in place?
Does your plan:
•Determine the sample of units of competency to be validated over
a set period of time
•Provide dates for proposed validation activities
•Include details about who will participate in assessment
validation, including the Chair of consensus panels, if relevant
•Include a strategy to ensure that all relevant staff are involved
•Identify what processes and materials will be used for
implementing and recording the outcomes of assessment
validation
Does your RTO have terms of reference in place to guide the work
of consensus panels?
Does your RTO have validation materials (policy, procedure, forms)
in place that cause participants to engage effectively in validation?
Does your RTO have a process for monitoring the action taken as a
result of validation?
Does your RTO have a process and plan in place for reviewing the
Ref: Assessor Guide
effectiveness of assessment validation?

15. System considerations
 What is the most appropriate approach to validation?
Condition Suggested approach
Whenever my RTO conducts internal Consider including external representation
validation few opportunities for improvement on your validation panel
arise
Our assessors are contractors and cannot Consider establishing assessor validation
come to validation consensus meetings partnerships at your local level, but ensure
because my RTO can’t afford to pay for their that improvements identified are recorded
time and some are located interstate and fed back to other assessors and
formalised
Our RTO conducts high risk units related to Consider consensus moderation, ideally
licensing, where the licensing authority has with external representation on your panel.
mandated the use of assessment tools it
provides
Our RTO is new and assessors do not have Consider inviting an external person with
a lot of experience expertise in assessment tool design to
validation consensus meetings

16. Assessment Quality
Management
Quality Assurance Quality Control Quality Review
(Input approach) (Outcome approach) (Retrospective approach)
Examples include: Examples include: Examples Include:
Industry competency standards Moderation in which adjustments to Monitoring and auditing of registered
as the benchmarks for assessor judgements are made to training organisations
assessment overcome differences in the difficulty
of the assessment tool and/or Review and validation of assessment
National assessment principles severity of the judgement. tools, processes and outcomes to
identify future improvements.
Minimum qualifications for
assessors (i.e., TAE40110) Follow-up surveys with key
stakeholders (e.g., student destination
Development of a Professional surveys, employer feedback on how
Code of Practice well the assessment outcomes
predicted workplace performance).
Standardisation of reporting
formats
Assessment Guidelines and
Policy Documents
Benchmark examples of varying
levels of performances
Assessment tool banks
Common assessment tasks
Exemplar assessment tools
Panelling, Piloting and/or Trialling
of assessment tools.
Professional development
programs/workshops for
assessors

17. Quality management in diverse
settings
 Identified barriers:
 Structural (i.e., the organizational and resource
aspects) – financial, variations of definitions across
key documents
 Process (i.e., the practices and activities that take
place) – rolling enrolments, partnering
arrangements, workloads
 Personal factors (i.e., the attitudinal, assessment
literacy and expectations of the key players).
 Strategies deployed by RTOs
Refer to Handout – Quality management processes
in diverse settings.

18. Activity 3: Assessment Quality
Management
Approach Strategies implemented
 Activity 4: Assessment Quality Man
Quality assurance
Quality control
Quality management
Ref: Implementation Guide

19. Andrea Chloe
Bateman Dyson
Director Director
Principal
Education Education
author
Consultant Consultant
Associate