Developing collaborative moderation approaches in a large, multi-cohort subject

Assessment moderation is understood as an important process which aims to ensure reliability, validity, consistency, and fairness in assessment practice. Moderation of marking is especially important for high enrolment, multi-cohort subjects with large marking teams. In practice, however, these processes continue to struggle with consistency, oversight, rigidity, and a lack of transparency within marking teams (Beutel, et al., 2015). Ideally, marking moderation should go beyond a process for the perception of accountability, and instead aim to support ongoing development and improvement of teaching and learning. This presentation reports the findings from a trial collaborative marking moderation approach in a previous session of IKC101. A collaborative approach was chosen with the aim of greater consistency in the marking, responding to previous SES data which reported students perceived a lack of consistency and fairness with marking feedback and grades.