Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 10:33:10 +1100
To: voced-coord@rite.ed.qut.edu.au
From: Shelley Gillis <s.gillis@edfac.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Ghosts of guests return!

To VECO members

I hope you all had a nice relaxing Xmas break and feel refreshed for 2000. Last year the discussions on assessment were rather quiet, so hopefully this year, we will have some more active discussions.

If you recall, last year we encouraged you to review some of the materials that were produced as a result of our research into assessment practices within school-industry programs http://arc.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/research/vet_in_schools/index.html.

One of those materials was the Guidelines for Teachers and Trainers. On page 29, we offer a definition of what is CBA?

CBA is the purposeful process of gathering appropriate and sufficient evidence of competence, and the interpretation of that information against industry competency standards to infer workplace performance. As part of this process, the results are recorded and communicated to stakeholders.

According to this definition, at a minimum, CBA should

• clearly define the purpose (eg credentialling, promotion, recruitment etc)
• identify and document the evidence required to demonstrate competency
• use appropriate evidence gathering methods
• interpret the evidence against the competency standards and make a judgement
• establish and use record keeping procedures
• report appropriate outcomes of the assessment to key stakeholders.

Some researchers argue that the aim of CBA is to assess the attributes underpinning competent performance in the most realistic, holistic and direct possible way. We go further than that, we argue that the major purpose of CBA is the prediction of workplace performance. If the assessment can not predict how the student will perform outside the assessment event, then it could be argued, that the assessment has no real value (in terms of validity). This doesn't matter whether you are assessing for RPL, promotion, recruitment or credentialling. It is the assessor's role to be able to gather and evaluate enough evidence to be confident that the person (ie student in this case) can and will be able to transfer the competencies to similar situations. This is what is referred to as the predictive validity of the assessment. It is also one of the components of competency (ie transferability) that underpins the development of competency standards (refer to page 23 of the Teachers and Trainers Guidelines), and the ultimate success of CBA.

On page 71 of the guidelines, we offer some suggestions of how to enhance validity, including predictive validity. Your feedback on the practicalities of implementing these strategies would be most welcome. It may also be a good opportunity to start the discussions.

Shelley

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First published February 7, 2000. Last modified February 24, 2000.