Following our recent Professional Development session “Developing Assessment Criteria” a highly experienced VET practitioner, Nik Bogduk from the NSW State Emergency Service’s RTO reached out to me with some additional thoughts, including a handy formula for developing assessment criteria and questioning.

“During the session, you mentioned that simply cutting and pasting the performance criteria was sometimes not applicable or not acceptable. You also addressed the distinction between assessing process and assessing result. You mentioned that difficulties could arise when some performance criteria could obviously be assessed by observation, but other criteria referred to abstract skills that could not be observed (such as ensuring that a plan addressed customer needs).”

“As I watched this session, I did not see this as a problem. Upon reflection I realised that I did not see it as a problem because of an algorithm that I follow. I share this algorithm with you in case it might help you to explain to others how to recognise and to solve the problem of confusion.”

Nik’s formula is broken down into two simple steps:

Step 1: Draft Criteria

Draft the Assessment Criteria by cutting and pasting the performance criteria. This serves to ensure that you do not overlook anything and, thereby, secure validity.

Step 2: Recast Criteria using Bloom’s Taxonomy

Recast each criterion by changing the verbs, if required.

Nik utilises Bloom’s Taxonomy to assist with this says that’s the key to getting out of trouble:

“Bloom’s Taxonomy provides verbs that make performance assessable. For straightforward manual performance, verbs such as “shows” and “demonstrates” can apply. For abstract skills, such physical verbs are not suitable; but the Taxonomy provides other verbs that can be used. These include “explains” or “justifies”.

Such verbs send a message to the Designer. That message is that the performance criterion in question is not one that can be or should be assessed by observation, because it cannot be “demonstrated”. That criterion is one that has to be assessed by questioning.

In short, focussing on the verb to be used, and choosing from Bloom’s taxonomy, serves to prompt the Designer to recognise if Observation or Questioning needs to be used (or some other method). Confusion evaporates if one follows this guideline.

Verbs for Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels

There are many verbs which can fall under each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Here’s a handy table to get you started: