Assessment Anguish

I have been a little tardy in my blog posts lately and a big part of that has been the constant stream of assessments to mark. After a particularly intensive session of assessment I realised that in a lot of cases most answers would be competent given the vagueness of the assessment question. Worse, often I wasn’t sure what I was assessing. These are validated and ASQA audited assessments. This week I have had a bit of spare time due to a postponed program in New Zealand and I have been completing a Diploma in Leadership and Management for currency reasons (there is another blog post there) . I decided not to use RPL as it was way too painful (there is another blog post there) and it would take ages to complete and the assessments were relatively easy. The assessments assess my ability to read a learner guide and use the internet. They do not assess  my ability to be an effective leader or manager. Here is a challenge for you. Do one of your own assessments as if you were a student and see if it honestly assesses what it should be assessing (validity). If you can answer everything by reading a text or learner guide and find most of the answers on the internet you have a real problem. Maybe it is just my experience. Answering a series of questions does not mean I can manage a team of people. There is a major flaw there. A written answer does not equate to an established behaviour, set of values or established set of real actions based on entrenched skills and knowledge.

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