How feedback contributes to the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA)

Feedback and questioning in the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement

Feedback and questioning are important in the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA). Feedback is needed to help your learners to improve, and questioning allows you to determine their level of understanding and it allows the learners to clarify anything regarding the assessment process and they can give you feedback to how they feel the assessment went and identify their own areas of improvement.  

How feedback benefits the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement

The idea of feedback is to increase your learner’s confidence and motivation. We live in a culture now where no news is good news and if we don’t hear anything then we are doing a great job. On the other hand, if we don’t do a good job then we get feedback there if we are only getting feedback which is negative, it makes us feel worthless, so we need to look at how the feedback we give, doesn’t destroy our learner’s confidence. Feedback should also give clarification, encourage discussion and progression by identifying what learners need to do to improve or simply pass. Remember to look back at your learners’ motivations as some learners just want a pass and are not really bothered about progressing and others are super keen to develop in all ways possible. You also need to inform learners what they have achieved and what they have left to do so they can start planning the end of the unit or programme.  

Constructive feedback in the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement

There are several types of feedback that you should give, and we should start with constructive. Constructive is used in the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA) which is also known as a praise sandwich where you start with a positive, give a developmental point and leave with a positive. So, if you are a meat-eater like me then the development point is the meat. The idea of this is that we are building up our learner’s confidence whilst given feedback. My wife uses this on me a lot. 

‘I really like the fact that you took time to fold our clothes, however if you do it this way there will be less creases in it. I am really pleased that you took time out of your day to do it.’ 

Questions are very handy indeed and I use formative assessment all the time just to check progress and understanding before moving on. If any learners have any questions, we can directly address it whilst in the moment instead of coming back to it later where its no longer fresh in our minds. Its great as it allows us to determine if our learners are ready for summative assessments.  

Using closed questions in the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement

Try to avoid closed questions as you don’t get too much out of them. I tend to use closed questions just to get an indication that everyone is on track. Do you have any questions, does this make sense to you? Open questions are the way forward, open questions ask the learner to tell you about something and allows a discussion to take place. An example is ‘which assessment methods do you use in your subject and why?’ Other useful types of questions are probing questions, and this is useful when teaching the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA) as learners will already do this but that just don’t know it. Probing is just asking to follow up answers to get more out of your learners to fully understand what they are saying, and I use it for them to give the answer but its my job to unlock it by asking the right questions.