Assessment case study

5 Auckland Hotel and Chefs Training School (AHCTS)

National Certificate in Hospitality (Cookery) (Level 2)

• Practical Cookery Units (13271, 13272, 13273, 13273, 13274, 13275, 13276, 13277, 13278, 13280, 13281)
• Recognition of Current Competence (RCC) Procedures

Case studies of assessment and moderation
Commentary
Background
Issues encountered
Quality systems
Support documents

Commentary

This example shows how the practical components of a whole qualification can be integrated and assessed in a rigorous yet simple way that is acceptable and workable in industry. It also demonstrates follow-up procedures and RCC processes that are simple but effective.

Assessment for the qualification requires the completion of a student workbook to cover the theory requirements, observation of practice in the training restaurant, completion of assignments and sign off of a work place assessment report work. The workplace assessment relies heavily on verification from a workplace observer and the AHCTS has criteria for the selection of establishments which ensure that the verifier is an industry acknowledged expert.

The focus of this submission is on the assessment process for the practical cookery unit standards where

• evidence is gathered during training period using observations in the training restaurant
• integrated on-job assessment takes place requiring repeatability and commercially viable performance for the practical components of the full qualification.

Material in the support documents include the following:

Candidate Workplace Observation Report
In this document the requirements for the practical cookery unit standards listed above have been clumped together into a series of workplace tasks. Instructions are given to the workplace supervisors as to what is required and the format is clear and simple. In addition, evidence is also sought for six further unit standards (13285, 13284, 14462, 14464, 14465, 14469) in the observation process.

Internal Marking Schedule
This includes instructions for the assessor for the internal assessment of the unit standards. This is done at element level and allows for group and individual recording. It also provides for evidence of internal moderation on the front page of the document.

Individual Candidate Assessment Plan for Incomplete Unit Standards
This is a simple yet effective method of enabling students to complete missing unit standards for their qualification.

RCC procedure graphs
This is a simple but effective method of outlining RCC procedures that is endorsed by the ITO. It includes:

1. RCC pre-assessment process NB Step 5 could include a unit standard gap analysis as well as determining the appropriate qualification level
2. Action plan of practical cookery assessment
3. Action plan for assessment of theory.

Background

In 1998 the Hospitality Standards Institute (HSI) introduced new National Qualifications for all areas in Hospitality (Domains Cookery, Food and Beverage, Accommodation Service, Hospitality Operations, and Guest Service), which replaced the "old world" trade certificates.

Initially, HSI developed individual Common Assessment Tasks (CATs) to record assessments for their unit standards. These CATs were primarily designed to record assessment made in the industry of individual trainees, rather than for training providers where a large number of candidates are assessed at one time.

The assessment process developed by HSI tended to focus on assessing each PC of an Element, which initially resulted in over-assessment of unit standards. This caused fear amongst assessors in the industry and from the providers that an excessive amount of time was required for conducting and recording the assessment, rather than teaching skills to candidates. As a result, the industry widely rejected the idea of assessing on the job. Therefore, the onus was on providers to implement training and assessment of the new unit standards.

To address these issues AHCTS decided to:

• design their own standardised activities and multiple assessment marking schedules to make recording of assessments more efficient for assessing tutorial staff
• select practical assessment activities, which enabled a combination of outcomes to be assessed simultaneously. This was achieved by looking at the activity and identifying which unit standards were covered by this activity
• devise a workplace observation booklet to document which parts of unit standard requirements had been demonstrated "on the job", signed off by the visiting assessor and verified by the workplace supervisor
• implement an assessment file keeping system which ensured that the minimum amount of valid and sufficient evidence has been collected for the candidate's assessment. This information was available for internal and external moderation.

By the beginning of 2001 HSI had changed the recording and evidence requirements for the assessment and moderation purposes as a result of feedback received from the industry and from training providers' assessors.

The Assessor was no longer required to sign off each PC in the recording sheets (CATs). The Assessor was required to sign off each candidate by each element, ensuring all performance criteria were considered in their assessment.

Issues encountered

In general these have been described above. Changes have mainly occurred to the design of a standardised multiple marking schedule. The practical marking schedule used for the past 12 months has undergone four drafts in design and layout. After changing and trialing different versions of the assessment marking schedules, the staff agreed on a design which would be the most user-friendly tool to be used by all assessors to ensure consistency of assessment and recording.

Some of the core generic assessment tools also underwent minor changes after presentation to the external cluster group. Feedback and suggestions on these changes have been acknowledged and the changes have been re-presented to the chair of the group and approved before further use according to SSB regulations.

A Recognition of Current Competence process was implemented to address the needs of students who had previous experience in the industry that they wanted assessed against unit standards or national qualifications

Quality systems

Internal moderation takes place at least twice a year for every tutor when the following areas are moderated:

• Selected assessment samples of practical and theory based assessments
• Assessment evidence keeping
• Any necessary editing for assessment activities or marking schedules are discussed
• Learning outcomes and student achievements are evaluated
• Because AHCTS is not using HSI CATs, all proposed assessment marking schedules and theory based unit assessment activities have been pre-assessment moderated and feedback has been given
• Programme/ Advisory Committee Meetings (twice a year)
  • Current training programmes and outcomes are evaluated and any proposed changes, resulting from feedback from industry, tutors or students are discussed, and changes proposed
  • Internal and assessment and moderation procedures are reviewed and any changes of policy are discussed
  • External moderation feedback is evaluated and discussed.

   

Support documents

The support documents are provided here as an example of assessment in practice but are not intended as a definitive guide.

• View the Candidate Workplace Observation Report, Internal Marking Schedule and Individual Candidate Assessment Plan for Incomplete Unit Standards in Word or PDF .
• View the RCC procedure graphs in PDF .

Page updated: 17 December 2002