Once you've developed a draft version of an assessment tool, you need to cross-check it against the unit of competency to make sure that you've covered everything. The best way to do this is to 'map' the competency line by line across to the assessment tool.

Have a look at the sample mapping and review document below to see how it could be laid out. You'll notice that there is provision to list the full details of the three main parts of the competency (elements/performance criteria, performance evidence, knowledge evidence) and map them across to the following components of the assessment tool:

• Practical demonstration checklists - where the candidate physically demonstrates their skills and ability to do the tasks at a practical level
  
  
• Theory questions - which could include written tests, verbal questions, assignments or other methods to determine the candidate's background knowledge and understanding of the concepts
  
  
• Third party report - where the workplace supervisor or line manager confirms that the candidate is applying their skills and knowledge consistently at work in the full range of contexts required.

Note that although the individual points from the competency do not necessarily need to be reflected in all three forms of assessment (practical demonstration, theory questions and third party report), you must cover them all of them in at least one form of evidence, and preferably in more than one where possible.

It's important to physically 'trial' your draft assessment tool with other assessors or workplace experts to check that you've got all the steps in the right sequence, and have covered everything that needs to be included. This also helps you to identify any wording that might be unclear.

Once the tool is in operation, you will need to 'validate' it periodically to check that it is still meeting the requirements of the competency, and is giving consistent results each time it's used. We'll look at this process in more detail later in this section.

Review of assessment tool

(This document maps and reviews the sample assessment tool shown on the link on the previous page, Sample assessment tools)