Developing and Using Training and Assessment Strategies
A Training and Assessment Strategy (TAS) is a crucial document that outlines the RTO’s approach to delivering and assessing a particular course. It helps the RTO to plan and manage training and assessment practices and resources effectively.
The Standards for RTOs define training and assessment strategies and practices as: “… the approach of, and method adopted by, an RTO with respect to training and assessment designed to enable learners to meet the requirements of the training package or accredited course.”
How Should Training and Assessment Strategies (TAS) Be Implemented?
The initial role of the TAS is to provide a framework for a consistent and comprehensive process to plan and document the design of a new course. Completing a TAS for each course helps RTOs to methodically design the course, considering all critical aspects including:
- Learners’ target group needs
- Interpreting competency requirements
- Setting course duration
- Defining delivery and assessment methods
- Analysing required resources, facilities, and trainers
Going through this initial planning exercise and completing this process in collaboration with industry and community stakeholders gives the RTO the best chance to prepare a training product that will respond to learners’ and industry’s needs. Documenting the outcomes of this process in a TAS provides further guidance for the RTO’s training and assessment practices.
The second role of a TAS is to provide guidance and support during the implementation of the course. It serves as a guide that supports RTO staff throughout the students’ journey.
- Course Outcomes and Pathways: These help course advisors provide information to potential learners about the course and align their expectations and needs with the right course.
- Course Duration and Delivery Modes: Accurate information about these helps the marketing team ensure that potential learners can make informed decisions and understand their commitments with the RTO.
- Entry Requirements: These established in the TAS provide a framework for RTO enrolment staff to perform due diligence during the admission process, ensuring that only those learners for whom the course was created are accepted.
Guidance for Implementation:
- Learning Environment: Intelligence gathered during industry and community engagement activities provides guidelines to set the best possible learning environment, including implementing simulated environments or work placements.
- Training Practices: Training duration, methods, and schedules provide a guide for RTO staff to plan, monitor, and document training practices, ensure consistency across the RTO, set quality expectations, and determine accountabilities.
- Assessment Methods: Assessment methods and validation arrangements guide the implementation of assessments that support the AQF certification outcomes.
An effective TAS provides RTO staff not only guidance but also quality benchmarks to monitor training and assessment practices.
Addressing Common Challenges:
- Difficulty and Technicality: Trainers, managers, and CEOs often complain about the regulatory requirement to have a TAS due to its complexity. It’s essential to acknowledge the competencies required to plan the design of a competency-based course. RTOs must have internal capabilities to complete this job, including skills to design learning programs, interpret training packages, design assessments, and use various technologies. Qualified trainers must be involved in this job.
- Support Tools: Ensure relevant systems, procedures, work instructions, and templates are available to your RTO staff to support them in designing, documenting, implementing, monitoring, and improving training and assessment practices.
- Repetitiveness: Complaints about the tediousness of writing strategies often refer to repetitiveness. To address this, RTOs should have adaptable strategies with pre-established modules and variations that staff can use to meet the needs of a specific learner cohort.
Teamwork and Continuous Improvement:
- Collaboration: The workload must be shared by trainers, managers, and other stakeholders involved in developing resources, organising training logistics, recruiting students, and monitoring compliance.
- Dynamic Document: The TAS is a live document. Continuous improvement is part of our DNA, and your strategies and practices will evolve and adapt. Use a suitable version control system to document and track improvements and changes.
Compliance:
Having a TAS per course is not optional for RTOs; it is a regulatory requirement (Standard 1, clauses 1.1 – 1.4). According to ASQA, the most frequent non-compliance is Standard 1. ASQA finds that:
- RTOs’ training and assessment strategies do not provide an accurate or sufficiently detailed framework for delivery and assessment.
- Training and assessment strategies are not adapted to meet the needs of the various target groups.
- RTOs’ delivery and assessment practices do not align with their training and assessment strategies.
Core Elements of a TAS:
- Qualification/Training Product: Identify the specific qualification, course, or skill set, including the relevant code and title.
- Target Group: Detail the target learner cohort(s), including any industry-specific needs, learner backgrounds, prerequisites, and assumed industry knowledge.
- Delivery Modes: Describe how the training will be delivered (face-to-face, online, work-based learning, distance, or a blend).
- Duration and Amount of Training: Outline the expected duration of the training and details regarding the amount of training provided.
- Trainers and Assessors: Include information about the trainers and assessors’ qualifications, experience, and competence.
- Assessment Methods: Describe the assessment methods and tools used, including the timing of assessments and types of evidence to be collected.
- Resources: Detail the physical and material resources required for delivery and assessment.
- Industry and Community Engagement: Include details of how the RTO consulted with industry stakeholders to validate the strategy’s relevance.
- Pathways and Outcomes: Outline potential pathways for learners, such as further educational opportunities or job outcomes.
By following these guidelines, RTOs can ensure that their TAS documents are comprehensive, effective, and compliant with regulatory requirements.
