Creating Assessments

FAQ on creating assessment questions

A recent question on a common VET forum asked – “do we need to provide sample answers to questions in assessments?”

In a nutshell – yes!

But one response on that forum indicated they would not hire any trainer/assessor who did not know the answers. Their further comment was that a trainer/assessor would ‘not be worth their salt’ if they needed that much guidance.

Consider this – you have been asked to assess at another company and are asking a set of questions of an assessee. They answer with information that does not suit what you think to be acceptable responses and so you mark them as incorrect.  During feedback you advise their results including that they did not satisfy the questions, which ones and why.

The assessee immediately advises they wish to appeal.  Upon your initial investigation it is found that the information they provided was what they were taught. What they were taught was how that company specifically operates. How the company operates is totally acceptable for the industry as one method of operation. It just wasn’t how you would operate.

So, if the ‘expected or sample responses’, ‘marking guide’ or whatever else it may be called is not available:

• the assessee may be assessed unfairly, and/or
• the assessment may not be reliable, and/or
• the assessment tool cannot be validated

If you had the marking guide, you’d most likely agree to answers as being acceptable responses. You might not have an appeal to deal with as you understand that organisation’s operating methods. And you would be able to validate the document as you can check answers in the marking guide against industry expected responses, your own and that of other assessors, similar to moderating.

If you are creating an assessment instrument of questions, or a project or assignment you need to provide suggested answers or possible responses.  Now, some responses might appear a bit vague but these are to ‘guide’ the assessor in making consistent and reliable decisions about the assessee responses. During your pre-assessment preparation you’d be checking through the whole document to ascertain if there are any irregularities you might need to question.

During assessor training, I suggest that a question may have a number of possible correct answers. While you may not be able to think of all possible responses, try this.  Add the last response as ‘other’. This allows flexibility of the assessment where you can highlight their answer (if marking papers) or note down their response (if verbally questioning).  This will allow you to check later for that response’s ‘correctness’. After the assessment you can review your ‘suggested responses’ and amend by adding that response, if you consider this appropriate. It’s a good way to record continuous improvement as well.

So, whenever you are creating an assessment instrument, ensure you have also created the expected/suggested responses or marking guide. It will allow other assessors to assess consistently, or to challenge the response/s when validating.