About

Accellier is the provider of choice for thousands of people and hundreds of organisations in Australia and around the world. Under our former name SAVE Training, we built a solid foundation on which Accellier now stands, embodying almost 10 years of service to Australia’s Tertiary and Vocational Education Sector. As a testament to this, since our inception in 2010 we have spent only a few thousand dollars on advertising. Our clients are almost entirely referred from our happy graduates and business customers.

Accellier is the trading name of SAVE Training Pty Ltd and is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO 32395) that offers a range of nationally recognised courses in education and business Australia wide through our online and face to face courses.

Our mission is to enhance people’s value through excellence in service and learning outcomes.

The Critical Aspects of Validation

There are three key critical aspects of Assessment Validation in Vocational Education and Training and these are:

  • the validation of assessment processes
  • methods; and
  • products.

How do I Validate Assessment Processes?

Assessment is not just about individual assessors going about assessment however they want. If you’re validating processes, you’re focussing more on what happens ‘behind-the-scenes’ of assessment.

The processes are really just the procedures that all the assessors follow. It’s a systematic approach.

The Registered Training Organisation (RTO) will have a range of processes that assessors must follow to conduct quality assessment. Things like:

  • Record keeping policies and procedures – where they file and store results, evidence, feedback
  • RPL processes and instructions
  • Systems for managing the student’s journey through a course
  • Privacy, confidentiality and ethics policies

When validating processes, the validation team is seeking to improve the system that supports the assessments that happen at that RTO.

They might answer questions like:

  • How could we make the assessment process more efficient for students?
  • Have any assessment records been lost?
  • Why are some assessors stuffing the completed assessment checklists in the glove-box of the ute when assessing on site, forgetting to scan them in when they get back to the office?
  • Could we use iPads to assess some activities on site?
  • How can the RPL process be made less convoluted?

How do I Validate Assessment Methods?

When we’re validating methods, we’re looking at what we’re getting the student to do to prove they are competent (e.g., observation, project tasks, written tests, verbal Q&A). We’re reviewing these methods to see if they’re the most suitable way to assess that unit.

For example, a validation team might validate the methods used in a very practical, hands-on unit of competency. They might discover that they’re relying far too much on written and theory-based assessment methods. As a result of the validation they might recommend that more practical assessment methods like project tasks and observations be used.

How do I Validate Assessment Products?

When we say we’re validating products, we’re focussing in on the actual assessment resources, documents, tools and instruments used at that organisation for assessment.

When validating products, the team might seek to answer questions like:

  • We can see students are often getting stuck on Questions 7, 12, 13 and 14 – how can we improve the wording to make it clearer?
  • The mapping shows we’re not adequately assessing performance criteria 2.2 and 2.3 – where can we address this in the assessment?
  • Are there any spelling and grammatical issues in the instructions to students?
  • Can the criteria in the observation checklists be made less ambiguous and open for assessor bias?