For more information on moderation or Unit Coordinator roles and responsibilities, please see the Assessment Procedure and Student Assessment Support Procedure and all of their attachments in the Policy & Procedure Manager.
Background
Moderation is a quality assurance strategy directed at the consistency, validity and fairness of assessment for Unit Coordinators, markers and students. It is a process of ensuring equivalence and comparability by independently evaluating whether there has been consistency in the standard of marking (and provision of feedback) across individual assessment items or whether significant deviations have occurred from a previously defined standard. Moderation should be viewed as an ongoing process that involves collaborative decision-making about expectations and assessment criteria and begins prior to the submission of items for assessment.
Moderation standard
The goal of moderation is to provide students with an equal opportunity for fair and accurate assessment regardless of the marker or where the marking has taken place. It is required for all assessments at transnational education locations. The sample size and scope of assessment submissions moderated for each assessment component should be sufficient to establish whether significant issues or deviations have occurred in the marking/feedback strategy applied by the original markers. For this reason it is important that the Unit Coordinator reviews the marks for a range of grades that have been awarded.
Please note: Moderation is required for all TNE unit offerings. Moderation is required for all assessments at transnational education locations. The required moderation sample for TNE is the greater of ten scripts or 10% of the submissions per affiliate, per assessment.
Moderation in Assessment Design
Where possible, engaging markers at the design and development stage of assessments is more likely to lead to stronger understandings of what is expected from students and what marking criteria mean. For this reason, it is useful to design assessment criteria/marking guides in consultation with markers, University colleagues and those experienced in assessment design. In the case of TNE offerings, the expertise, local knowledge and student engagement capacities of Murdoch staff, partner institutions and their teaching affiliates can be invaluable in developing and maintaining successful transnational programs and ensuring a trusting and collegial relationship. In units delivered transnationally, it may also be useful to design assessments in consultation with the affiliate lecturers. Assessment design should also include factoring in the time that moderation processes take when setting due dates (i.e. setting an assignment submission in the last week of Trimester is highly discouraged, as the extra time needed to moderate a large sample may lead to delays in students receiving feedback prior to exams/the results submission deadline).
Process
Unit Coordinators should notify their Affiliate Lecturer(s) of their expectations on the standard of marking and the feedback provided to students as early as possible. It is important that markers have the necessary marking guides/rubrics no later than the assessment due date (though best practice is to provide them in the Unit Guide). Consensus/pre-marking meetings are also useful in establishing assessment requirements, standards, expectations and potential divergent answers to assessment questions so that markers can be confident of making use of a full marking range.
Affiliate Lecturers should forward marked samples (the greater of 10 assignments or 10% of their total cohort's assignments) to the Unit Coordinator for moderation within one week of receiving the assignments. The sample assessments must represent a range of results and the Unit Coordinator can select which students’ papers they wish to see for any given assessment to ensure that they are not looking at the work of the same students for every assessment in their unit (notwithstanding that outliers tend to produce consistent results). The ALTC also recommends that outliers (ie the lowest and highest scoring papers) and all papers that have been assessed a fail grade should be moderated. Murdoch University does not permit the scaling of marks to “fit a predetermined distribution,” so in essence, it is the marker (and their approach and interpretation of the marking guides/rubrics) rather than the marks that are moderated.
Once the Unit Coordinator has moderated their samples by ‘double marking’, they should contact the Affiliate Lecturer with feedback on both the score/grade that has been awarded as well as the feedback that the Affiliate Lecturer has intended to provide the students. They should also state any changes required (in reference to both specific papers and more broadly if applicable) prior to the release of papers and results to students if they deem the Affiliate Lecturer has not followed the marking guide properly or has marked too generously/harshly.
In the event that changes to marks and/or feedback is required, any adjustment of marks should be demonstrably fair and equitable for each student affected. Furthermore, the Unit Coordinator needs to be able to justify all such adjustments. Therefore:
- Post-hoc scaling of marks across a cohort of students (and especially on the basis of a small number of inconsistent results) is not allowed;
- Simply reducing the top scores or increasing the bottom scores is also not supported; and
- Corrections to marks must be completed as soon as possible.
The Affiliate Lecturer will finalise their marks once the Unit Coordinator has finished the moderation process and communicated their instructions to the Affiliate. Once the Affiliate has made the necessary changes (if any), assessments will then be released to the students within three weeks after the deadline of the specific assignment for them to view their marks and feedback.
It is particularly important that each student is advised of their final moderated result (ideally via LMS) before sitting their Final Exam. Once all of the component marks that are maintained by the Affiliate Lecturer have been finalised, these should be provided to the Unit Coordinator as soon as possible (i.e. all ‘continuing assessments’ prior to the final exam for Singapore and Malaysia-based Affiliate Lecturers; all assessments including the final exam for Dubai-based Affiliate Lecturers). It is highly encouraged that the Gradebook function is used on LMS so that Unit Coordinators can download this information easily.
Moderation reports must be submitted to the Results Committee at the end of each teaching period. For more information on this please see Affiliate Management.
Issue resolution
Generally moderation is a very smooth process where any disagreements or confusion can be settled by the Unit Coordinator working collaboratively with the Affiliate Lecturer to clearly articulate their needs and rationale for any adjustments. In the rare cases where there are issues in moderation that require escalation, the Head of School in liaison with the TNE Team should contact the appropriate party in the partner organisation to initiate discussion. The Unit Coordinator must satisfy themselves, after discussion with the marker(s) that the cause of the problem has been corrected and the issue will not be repeated.
Corrections to marks must be completed as soon as possible. Where a TNE offering is involved and the students are enrolled in a Murdoch Unit, the Unit Coordinator must consult with the Head of School who has the authority to require a total re-mark by an educational partner. The standard process for unresolved disagreements between the affiliate marker and Unit Coordinator is to raise the matter with the TNE Dean at the partner location for resolution (i.e. if there are perceived issues to do with unfair assessment, poor marking rubrics relative to the unit content etc.). If the matter cannot be resolved at this first instance, the TNE Dean will escalate it to the Head of School for a final determination.