To test or not to test

If you have ever worked in Australia’s VET sector, chances are you have suffered this dilemma before. And if you have, I bet you have always decided in favour of just one more question that tests that one last piece of knowledge evidence which you forgot to cover (or, so you thought).

When I first joined the VET sector here, I saw how my colleagues were always racking their brains for more and more knowledge questions to add to assessments. I joined the club soon enough having learnt from the best. However, the wake-up call came soon enough when one day, I ended up collating a sixty-eight (no, not six to eight) page assessment for a single module covering two units of competency in a Certificate IV course on beauty therapy. The epiphany came when I printed that assessment and it turned out to be a booklet even higher degree students would shy away from. I knew we were definitely doing something wrong. But, what was it?

We were not assessing smartly; yes that is what we were doing wrong all the time.

I know there is no running away from impeccable assessment mapping to impress those friendly auditors we meet every year. Believe me, I am not talking short-cut smokescreen assessments to achieve overnight success in the VET business; in fact I am referring to well-thought-out assessment plans that save you the hassle of conjuring knowledge questions out of thin air and actually make your assessments much smarter.

There are two types of knowledge that every training package is designed to test. They do not tell you this, but if you delve deep into the competencies, it does not take an Einstein to figure this out.

Procedural knowledge (aka Performance Evidence) – these are things students are able to do, such as use a lemon to make lemon tea. Any evidence in this category thus refers to a practical skill.

Declarative knowledge (aka Knowledge Evidence) – these are pieces of information students are expected to hold in their heads such as what a lemon is. Any evidence in this category thus refers to theoretical knowledge.

So, how does knowing this distinction matter?

The trick of the VET assessment trade is for you to realise that a lot of theoretical knowledge is implied in the context of practice. For instance, if your student can use a lemon to make lemon tea, chances are they know what a lemon is, how it tastes, and so on. If your student is able to perform a heart surgery (procedural knowledge) successfully, does that not imply that he knows things like where to find the heart in a human body and what heart valves are (declarative knowledge)? Asking them questions to check their theoretical knowledge that is already implicit in their performance only adds redundancy to your assessments, not value.

So, how do you assess smartly?

Step 1 – Take a panoptic view of your entire assessment plan.

Step 2 – Tick off all the performance evidence pieces you are testing through performance assessments.

Step 3 – Think rationally about which pieces of knowledge evidence are implicit in those performance evidence pieces, and tick those off too.

Step 4 – Craft knowledge questions for only the remaining pieces of knowledge evidence.

And voila! You have your very own, very first smart VET assessment. I bet it won’t be sixty-eight pages long.