If you employ or manage someone who is completing the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, there may be a great deal of opportunities at work which can be leveraged as learning and assessment toward this course.

This article sets out these opportunities so that you and your trainee trainer can make the most of these.

When we say “trainee trainer” or “trainee assessor” we are referring to the person who is completing their Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

Training

The first and most obvious one is any opportunities for training. This can be divided into two categories:

• 40+ minute group-based training sessions with groups of 8 or more people
• Individual 1-on-1 training

Training Groups of 8 or more students

If your trainee trainer has the opportunity to train groups of 8 or more students in a group setting for 40+ minutes at a time, this is going to be great for the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

You should ensure that your trainee trainer:

1. Prepares a session plan (aka lesson plan) for each session they deliver
2. Delivers a session that runs for 40 minutes or more
3. Gathers feedback at the conclusion of the training
4. Records video footage from the session
5. Actively reflects on the training
6. Actually facilitates the process of the group achieving a learning objective, using a range of delivery methods (i.e, doing a one-way ‘speech’ or just narrating PowerPoints is rarely sufficient).
7. The training session is vocational in nature – that is, the training will benefit the participants in their career, or goes toward achieving some other work-related objective.

When recording video, ultimately it’s best if we can see the whole session. However being a minimum of 40 minutes, we recognise the file sizes can be quite large. So we may also accept a sort of ‘highlight reel’ of clips from throughout the session that totals at least 20 minutes of footage. If you do this, ensure:

• There are clips of key moments in the session including opening and closing and different delivery techniques
• The clips include different delivery techniques, for example
  • 10 minutes of presenting to the group with whiteboard or PowerPoint
  • 5 minutes of group discussion/Q&A
  • 5 minutes of facilitating a group practical activity
• Each clip is at least 5 minutes
• It is clear that there are 8 or more participants by at the very least including a brief clip of the group (from behind may be okay if confidentiality is a concern).

Overall, three 40+ minute sessions are required. Two must be consecutive (e.g. session 1, lunch, then session 2 with the same group). Then a third session with a different group of students.

This will help them achieve the units TAEDEL401 Plan, organise and deliver group-based learning and either BSBCMM401 Make a presentation or TAEDEL301 Provide work skill instruction.

Individual 1-on-1 training

While traditional group-based and classroom style delivery is a feature of the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, so too is on-the-job learning with individuals rather than groups. The most common example being a formal coaching or mentoring relationship with a worker in the workplace, with clearly defined learning objectives to achieve.

The big difference is they mostly achieve the learning objectives through real-world practice on-the-job. In a classroom, the trainer might create situations and scenarios for people to learn and practice skills. In the workplace, the facilitator is more likely to:

• Meet with the worker/student regularly to help keep track of their progress
• Ensure they have time and opportunities to practice the skills they are trying to learn
• Give feedback on how they are performing on their journey to achieving those skills
• Facilitate connections with other experienced workers to gain exposure to different ideas, perspectives and ways of working.

How to make the most of these opportunities for your trainee trainer who is doing on the job training?

1. Ensure there is a plan and clear objectives set.

A lot of on-the-job learning with individuals, as described above, often happens in an ‘ad-hoc’ way with no formal plan for what the individual needs to learn and how they are to learn it. It’s is not about just ‘showing the new person how to use the computer system’ but formalised learning-facilitation. The planning and formalisation of the learning doesn’t need to be overly complex. It is often expressed in simple one-page plans with follow up emails and brief reports to managers.

2. Videos of the learner-facilitator relationship

Get short video clips of meetings between the workers and your trainee-trainer. Obviously, learning that happens over a period of time, on the job through practice is not practical to film and does little to demonstrate the skills we’re looking for anyway. We are particularly interested in:

• Short meetings between the trainee-trainer and the worker/learner, particularly those at the beginning, establishing the objectives and how the worker/learner is to achieve them through on-the-job learning.
• Demonstrations. While it may be largely practice-based, your trainee-trainer will still need to demonstrate how to do things. They might use techniques such as “I do, we do, you do” or DEDICT. Get at least one clip of this sort of thing happening.
• Coaching, feedback, reviewing. Any opportunity where the trainee-trainer is coaching, providing feedback, helping correct performance, reviewing performance, etc is going to be useful to video record as evidence of their workplace learning facilitation skills.

The facilitation must be with at least two different students on separate occasions each.

All this goes toward achievement of the unit TAEDEL402 Plan, organise and facilitate learning in the workplace and possibly TAEDEL301 Provide work skill instruction (depending on electives chosen).

Assessing

Assessment is another key opportunity for streamlining your trainee trainer’s Certificate IV in Training and Assessment journey.

Here we will want to get evidence of:

1. Fully completed (‘marked/graded’) assessments for an entire unit of competency
2. Feedback given to students
3. The result/decision made (competent or not-yet-competent)
4. Video footage of them briefing a candidate on the assessment and giving feedback/results.

Specific student details may be redacted for confidentiality.

We will require completed competency assessments for at least 5 students, including at least one of them for a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) assessment.

If you are concerned about your trainee-trainer (who doesn’t hold Certificate IV in Training and Assessment) making assessment decisions at your RTO, and the compliance issues around that, please see the Frequently Asked Questions below.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can we let them assess students in an RTO without a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment?

This is an unfortunate but well known ‘catch-22’ in the unit TAEASS402 Assess competence. The unit requires TAE students to make assessment decisions on real vocational learners, but the Standards for RTOs 2015 require assessors to hold Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. You have to assess to get your Cert IV, but can’t assess without your Cert IV.

Fortunately there are a couple of work-arounds.

1. The Standards for RTOs 2015 allow for an industry expert and a qualified assessor to work together to make the assessment decision. So a well planned and documented supervisory arrangement should suffice in this instance.
2. An ‘off the record’ shadow assessment. To do this, the trainee assessor is present for the entire assessment, they have their own set of clearly marked assessment tools that are identical to the qualified assessor’s. The only difference is the trainee-assessor’s record does not get filed with the RTO, but retained and submitted as part of their work towards the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. When doing this, the student being assessed should be informed that a trainee-assessor is present and what their role is.

What if we cannot film our students for confidentiality?

To be clear, we do not really need to see their faces. We do need to confirm that 8 students are present, however once that’s established, we are only interested in the skills and performance of the trainee-trainer.

If the mere presence of a camera is not permitted due to security or other policies, then the session will not be able to be used towards their assessment tasks, other than as supplementary evidence. For sensitive or classified defence/military, legal, corrections, or other similar settings, we can either arrange an observer to attend (travel costs may apply). Otherwise the tasks may need to be completed outside of these restrictions.

Can the group-based sessions be on Zoom or similar?

Zoom-based sessions can make it difficult to meet all the requirements for assessment. It can be done, but it is important that you consult with the assessor before doing this. It may be that one or two of the required sessions are done via Zoom, with a third done in a real training room environment.