COMMONWEALTH ASSOCATION FOR
EDUCATION, ADMINISTRATION AND
MANAGEMENT
ISSN NO 2322- 0147
MARCH
2014
VOLUME 2 ISSUE 3
Moderation of Student Assessment in Higher
Education
Excellence International Journal of Education and
Research (Multi- subject journal)
Excellence International Journal Of Education And Research VOLUME 2
ISSUE 3
ISSN 2322-0147
Moderation of Student Assessment in Higher Education
Dr. Mahamud Khan,
Ex- Researcher D/O Education, AMU,
Aligarh202002-(U.P)
DR. (Mrs.) Salma Kuraishy
Associate Professor
Department of Education Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh -202002- (U.P)
India Educational Consultant, Member Affiliate with Institute for Learning, U.K., Japanese Government
Scholarship (Mombusho) Awardee Gold Medalist
ABSTRACT
Moderation of student assessment is a critical component of teaching and learning in
contemporary universities. Yet, despite this, it tends to be marked by idiosyncratic and
sporadic processes informed by minimal understanding. This paper, in the light of
forthcoming radical national requirements for the declaration of moderation processes in
tertiary curricula in India, will present four discourses of moderation. In a Faculty of
Education in a large metropolitan university in Australia we identified four discourses of
equity, justification of assessment and accountability. The thrust of this paper is that they will
act as a starting point for academics to review their beliefs and attitudes towards moderation
of student assessment.
Keywords: Moderation; assessment of higher education; professional conversations
Introduction
Moderation is understood to be a practice of engagement in which teaching team
members develop a shared understanding of assessment requirements, standards and the
evidence that demonstrates differing qualities of performance (Adie, Lloyd and Beutel 2011.
Its purpose is to ensure that the assessment with established criteria, learning outcomes and
standards; assessment processes are equitable, fair and valid; judgements are consistent,
reliable and based on evidence within the task response.
The process of moderation in higher education is usually governed by universitywide policies and practices. In the United Kingdom and in New Zealand, for example, this
takes the form of an established practice of external and internal moderation that is part of the
quality management process (New Zealand Qualifications Authority 2011; Quality Assurance
Agency for Higher Education 2011). In Australia, the process has been typically located
within individual institutions with occasional reference, in specific circumstances, to external
expertise. While internal moderation supports consistency of judgements and standards
within an institution, external moderation involves judgements by an expert with the purpose
of ensuring consistency with national standards across higher degree institutions. Moderation
processes in universities in Australia are guided by the national university accreditation
authority, the Tertiary Education Quality (TEQSA) and Standards Agency which began
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operations in late January 2012 (TEQSA 2012). University programmes will be required to
declare. This formalising of systemic moderation of assessment in Australian universities is
likely to upset a culture of practice, in which moderation is part of the teaching and learning
process but is not currently overt. There appears, at present, to understanding of moderation
as an integral part of teaching and learning, and differentiated understanding as to why or
how moderation should occur and how circumstances may affect the type of practice adopted.
This may lead to the emergence of idiosyncratic or sporadic processes between and within
tertiary institutions (see, for example, Goos, Gannaway, and Hughes 2011). These, over time,
become habituated in standard practice for individuals or small teams which are neither
shared nor questioned (see Bloxham 2009; Bloxham, Boyd, and Orr 2011; Hughes 2008;
Lawson and Yorke 2009). What have emerged are pockets of well-intentioned or rigorously
defended practice which may privilege one type of moderation over another. For example,
this may be manifested in the singular and narrow view of moderation as an exclusively post
hoc process concerned solely with per formative measures and outcomes (see Orr 2007). It is
expected that the TEQSA requirement for Australian universities will force consideration of
moderation practices as part of curriculum design and allow greater transparency to students
and system authorities. It will further force a constructive alignment (Biggs 1999; Biggs and
Tang 2011) between learning outcomes, assessment and moderation.
To understand how moderation is being used by academics in Australia, we have
drawn on the work of Michel de Certeau (1984) and his notions of accommodation and
appropriation of practices. De Certeau focussed on the adoption and transformation of objects
and spaces to suit the needs of users and to align with their personal understandings and
beliefs. Thus, at the surface level, practices as required through policy are being followed and
may be seen to align with the incoming TEQSA requirements. However, on closer inspection,
multiple and varied enactments are revealed which may only partly satisfy the new
requirements. De Certeau (1984) proposed that investigations need to examine the different
ways of operating within a given practice by its users because: The presence and circulation
of a representation tells us nothing about what it is for its users.
We must first analyse its manipulation by users who are not its makers. Only then
we can gauge the difference or similarity between the production of the image and the
secondary production hidden in the process of its utilisation. (xiii) de Certeau’s theories
suggest to us that while we can confidently state that moderation processes are occurring
within higher education institutions (for policies and public statements clearly indicate that
this is the case), we need to delve deeper into the enactments of moderation processes to
understand the mechanisms of its ‘consumption’ by academics. Only then we can start to
untangle and interpret the contribution of moderation to the teaching and learning practices
within higher education. This paper will describe four discourses that emerged from a recent review of
moderation practices in a Faculty of Education in an Australian University (Adie,Lloyd and
Beutel 2011). It will premise its discussion on an understanding that moderation is not a
simple linear process cumulatively built from isolated practices. It is, rather, complex and
frequently inaccessible. By presenting moderation as multiple discourses, we will attempt to
provide a framework for academics to navigate through the process and to make decisions
about practice which will suit their systemic contexts.
Moderation as equity
Moderation as equity was typified by conversations of consistency and fairness for
students which aligned with broader discourses of equity within the university. Notions of
equity comparable to this understanding are prevalent in the general rationales provided by
tertiary institutions. For example, the University of Tasmania (2011) prefaces its guide to
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academics by stating that ‘the purpose of moderation is to ensure that teachers are making
consistent judgements about standards ... [and that] a response is awarded a particular level of
achievement regardless of who marks/grades it’. Similarly, Curtin University (2010) equates
quality assurance to accuracy, consistency and fairness. This is further supported in the
literature by Hughes (2008) who suggested that one of the purposes of moderation was
‘improvement through consistent and comparable judgements’ (1), while Bloxham (2009)
included fairness in a list of benefits of ‘good moderation’. The equity discourse in our study
was evident when academics spoke of moderation in terms of enabling them to have
confidence in the consistency of their interpretation of the standards amongst other markers,
which ensured fairness for all students. It was important that similar standards were seen to
be applied across cohorts of students. For example, a coordinator of a large unit stated, in an
interview said that ‘moderation is for ensuring fairness in marking across a cohort the fairness
element is for me the biggest point of moderation’.
Moderation as justification
Moderation as justification was typified by conversations of confidence in decisions,
providing quality feedback, and support to respond to student queries. Achievement standards
within higher education are acknowledged to encompass multiple dimensions of knowledge,
skills and higher order thinking processes (Bloxham 2009; Sadler 2010). This complexity
makes standards difficult to define (Coates 2010) and creates one of the major tensions facing
academics in the higher education sector: how to assess and make judgements with
consistency and comparability according to standards which remain complex and elusive
turning the purpose of moderation towards themselves. Moderation provided academics with
confidence in the decisions that they had made, so that they could justify their decisions to
students if queried as well as providing better feedback on the qualities within a student’s
work that denoted a standard. For example, one academic commented that moderation is
about professional justification, to be able to justify the grade given, so if a student comes
back with a query about it, a professional justification can be given for that grade and the
assignment does not go forward unless a teacher has professionally justified to oneself what
grade was given. The teacher should then feel comfortable and be in a position to say to the
student ‘well, you do the same process and we will compare what we have come up with’.
There are two related aspects within this discourse. The first is concerned with
preparing a public defence in the instance of a dissatisfied student questioning their grade.
The second is internal to the academic who wants to be Assessment and Evaluation in Higher
Education comfortable with or convinced by the validity of their decision-making.
Moderation of achievement standards amongst academics is purported to support the
development of consistency in the understanding, interpretation and enactment of standards.
Bloxham (2009) similarly noted the benefits of moderation has increased student confidence
in marking and the development of staff confidence in responding to students’ assessment
queries.
Moderation as community building
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Moderation as community building Moderation as community building is typified by
conversations of collaborative establishment and review of assessment tasks, criteria,
standards, learning experiences and teaching strategies. Developing shared knowledge of
standards is understood as being ‘created through a social process involving dialogue and
experience and using artefacts’ (Bloxham 2009, 218). Where moderation was thought of as a
community building experience, academics worked purposefully to involve the entire
teaching team in discussions that commenced at the beginning of the semester. For example,
one academic explained how she had members of her team mark and moderate a common
assessment item before the commencement of the teaching semester. The ensuing discussion
involved academics in developing a shared understanding of the standard of work required
for the current year level cohort and the qualities that would denote a standard. This
conversation also involved academics considering how they would support student learning
of the qualities being valued in this unit as evidenced in the assessment task. But there were a
number of difficulties faced by the unit coordinators who wanted to use moderation to
develop shared understandings of practice within the teaching team and to engage staff in
quality discussions. These included issues with
• The assessment task, particularly in relation to the length and complexity;
• The time frame, particularly in the instance of examinations where there was limited
opportunity for extended discussion; and
• The size and configuration of the teaching team, particularly in the instances of larger and
geographically dispersed teaching teams, and the varying involvement of permanent and
sessional staff. Where these difficulties are overcome, shared discourses of moderation and
standards can be established. We observed the mentoring of new academics and those new to
the unit and regarded these as clear evidence of community building.
Moderation as accountability
Moderation as accountability is typified by references to distribution of marks; and
the unit coordinator as standard setter, final arbiter and expert. As many authors (Bloxham
2009; Hughes 2008; Sadler 2010) have stated, moderation is the institutional mechanism by
which we can assure the quality of our assessment processes within higher education. From
the perspective of unit coordinators and academics in our study, moderation was a process
made necessary by their responsibility for the marks that they awarded students for
assessments. This sense of responsibility became problematic when the emphasis on the
grading process moved to a normative representation of performance. This occurred typically
when unit coordinators used standard deviation and distribution of marks within and across
tutorials to call for adjustments of student grades. While the distribution of marks can provide
insight into the standard being applied to marking by a tutor, it is important that this
information is understood as only part of the story and that other factors must be considered
before grades are adjusted. Akin to the study conducted by Goos, Gannaway and Hughes
2011, current university policy on assessment at times appeared to be either misunderstood,
or unknown, with staff appearing to be working under superseded policy guidelines and
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practices. When definitions of moderation and description of practice appeared overly
concerned with the normative distribution of marks and grades per formative outcomes of
students, lecturers were concerned with systemic processes to justify results, particularly if
‘too many’ grades of distinction or high distinction had been awarded. While an argument
could be raised that such a heavy weighting of grades may infer an issue with the rigour of
the assessment task, or the standard as interpreted by the marker, it does not indicate that
student grades should be adjusted when marking against a standard that has been provided to
students.
Conclusion
This paper has presented four discourses of moderation which emerged from a recent
study in a Faculty of Education in Indian. From this, noted that moderation practice is
currently an idiosyncratic mix of beliefs and experience espoused through one or more of the
discourses, namely equity, justification, community building and accountability. Further, and
more critically, we observed moderation occurring as different enactments of practice as
lecturers appropriated a policy discourse to accommodate differing needs and differing
understandings.
While we believe that moderation involving substantive conversations around the
quality of work is integral to effective teaching and learning, we warn against viewing
moderation in a simplistic or singular way. In this paper, we have attempted to untangle the
different ways that moderation is viewed and enacted in one university faculty. With this
start, we hope to open up avenues for further critique of the value of moderation processes in
higher education when working within standards-based assessment practices. We also hope to
have provided academics with a starting point from which to review their current practice
before engaging with newly imposed national requirements.
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