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Of the last 10 audits completed I have viewed some excellent quality learning resources. Most of these learning resources were developed in house by the RTOs in consultation with industry which
also included their trainer/assessors. The resources met the full requirements of the respective Training Package and had been quality assured via Validation exercises. My normal investigation goes
deep and looks for evidence of validity in skills and knowledge components, four dimensions competency, critical aspects of evidence, element & performance criteria etc etc… not exhaustive by any
means. To those RTOs that passed the internal audit in the above areas, Great Work and Well Done guys (the term ‘guys’ is gender neutral in this newsletter).
Lack of Quality Assurance
At the other end of the spectrum, we find the RTOs with commercially sourced learning resources that have not been quality assured. Now I have nothing against commercially sourced
resources, there are some excellent resources in the market place and when quality assured and contextualised by the RTO, there is normally no issue.
But, you cannot just purchase the resources and put them into the student and trainers hands without any review. In some cases, what the RTO has failed to realise is that they need to quality assure
the resources against the training package, and where gaps are found they will need to develop additional resources to fill the gaps. A validation exercise certainly will find ‘gaps’.
Worst Case Scenario
In the worst case scenarios I have seen resources that have not been quality assured, and in fact when audited have failed to address the underpinning knowledge & skill requirements and lacked
required rigour to address all of the assessment requirements detailed in the respective unit of competency. This is a BIG OUCH for the RTO when audited by the regulator…
Validation
If you would like to know more about Validation, I wrote an article on Validation which is a free download from my website, click here for access.
I have also developed a policy on Validation & Moderation, available as a download here. |
