Sharyn Hooper and Scott Huntley's presentation from MoodlePosium 15 on using Moodle activity tracking to aid with ASQA compliance.

1. Compliance,
Assessments and
Activity Tracking
Sharyn Hooper and Scott Huntley

2. The world of compliance in
VET…
 ASQA – Australian Skills Quality
Authority
 Registered Training Organisation
(RTO) provides nationally recognised
and accredited training in the VET
sector in Australia
 ASQA is the national regulator of the
vocational education and training
(VET) sector and conducts
registration and compliance audits

3. RTO Standards
 The standards that refer to the
assessment process are 1.8 – 1.18
 The standards require that we
validate assessment practices and
judgments
 A valid assessment judgment is one
that confirms a learner holds all of
the knowledge and skills described
in a training product

4. RTO Standards
 In addition the assessment process
must be conducted in accordance
with the Principles of Assessment
and the Rules of Evidence.
 Principles of Assessment:
− Fairness
− Flexibility
− Validity
− Reliability

5. RTO Standards
 Rules of Evidence
− Validity
− Sufficiency
− Authenticity
− Currency
 For more detailed information on the
current standards -
Download Standards for RTOs 2015

6. The audit experience
 We passed but challenges and areas
of improvement noted include –
− Documenting the evidence to justify
the outcome you give a student. Why
is a competent a competent???
− Feedback to students
− Informing students at every step in
the learning and assessment cycle

7. Competency-based training
and assessment
 The definition that ASQA use for
competency-based training and
assessment:
Competency based training and
assessment means that a person is
trained and assessed to meet the
performance and knowledge
requirements to safely and
effectively complete workplace
activities in a range of different
situations and environments, to an
industry standard that is expected
in the workplace.

8. Competency based
 What competency based training
and assessment is NOT…
Competency based training and
assessment does not compare the
training outcomes between
learners. Learners are assessed
against the requirements of a
training product.

9. Competency-based
assessment
 What makes a student competent in
a unit of study?
 Is it 50%?
 Is it 70%?
 How about 100%?

10. How do I pass the unit?
 Students entering the VET sector
from school can be used to either:
− Marks, percentages or similar. For
example 55 out of 100
− If I turn up and hand something in I
must pass right???
 We often get students who want to
know the minimum amount they can
complete in terms of assessment to
be deemed competent
− Surely if I do well in Part A I can skip
Part B???

11. How do we use Moodle?
 Like many Moodles, different
teachers use in different ways
 Not much interactivity
− Always a challenge to use more of
Moodle’s potential
 We wanted to trial Moodle core
features to help with Compliance
issues
− Create transparency with our
students around Competency Based
Assessment.

12. How do we use Moodle?
 Creation of a “Development Moodle”
to build pilot courses and trial
features
− We wanted to focus on Activity
Completion, Access Restriction, the
Progress Bar, and Badges
− In other words, focus on controlling
students’ workflows and feedback
 Decided to trial Database cluster as
Sharyn and Scott are both very
familiar with this cluster
− Focused on a single unit: ICTPRG425 Use
Structured Query Language

13. Student assessment guide
 One of the early steps in meeting
the requirements around the
assessment process is informing the
student of:
− How they will be assessed
− When these assessments will take
place
 A standard document known as a
student assessment guide is used

14. Student assessment guide
 Sample assessment guide containing
all the information required under
compliance standards

15. Student assessment guide
 The evidence requirement is a
student acknowledgment of the
receipt and understanding of this
document
 This is what the student sees:

16. Student assessment guide
 No access to the learning material
until the SAG receipt has been
accepted:

17. Student Assessment Guides
 There are other similar “red tape”
forms that we need students to fill
out, sign or acknowledge
 For example Authority to publish or
WHS checks
 This used to be done with hard
copies

18. Feedback and Tracking
 Options that we are trialling:
− Outcomes
− Choice activities
− Progress bar
− Badges
− Course Completion Report

19. Outcomes
 These are aligned to performance
criteria or elements of competence
or benchmarks that a student needs
to achieve
 Once the benchmarks have been
created they are assigned to the
relevant assessment events
 When teacher grades students’
completed assessment they
evaluated each “benchmark” as
satisfactory or not satisfactory

20. Outcomes
 Sample of setting up one Outcome:

21. Choices Activity
 We create a section in the Moodle
based on student achieving a
benchmark
 Same choice technique as used in
the student acknowledgment of
SAG.
 In other words the student
acknowledges the feedback and this
triggers activity completion – this is
our hack to allow the workflow to
continue

22. Sample Choices Activity

23. Progress Bar
 We decided to do this on the
element level as there are so many
performance criteria
 One element represents one
segment on the progress bar
 When the student acknowledges the
feedback on element completion it
reflects on their progress bar.

24. Progress Bar
 Sample showing that one student
(Jacob) has achieved one element of
competency so far:

25. Badges
 Can reflect the same data as a
progress bar
 We’ve set this up to reflect badges
gained:
− per unit element of competency,
− for a single unit or
− for a cluster of units

26. Course Completion Report
 Once the outcomes, choices and
either badges or progress bar have
been set up there are a number of
reports that a teacher can use to
track student completions
 The next slide shows a sample:

27. Course Completion Report

28. Where to from here…
 This is just a start - lots more to try
 Great potential in saving time and
meeting our compliance targets
 A glimpse into the future – using
IFTTT or similar interfaces to trigger
events outside of Moodle:
− Putting a badge on a student
Facebook page
− Tweeting a course completion
congrats!