Moderation of Assessment in a Student Selected Component Context

Background: At the University of Glasgow, Student Selected Components (SSCs) involve a wide range of supervisors and modalities of assessment, with over 800 students undertaking SSCs each year, involving more than 200 supervisors from a wide range of specialties. A key aim of the SSC programme is to provide a variety of options for students, while attempting to ensure assessment consistency and fairness of grades across SSCs. To this end, a pilot and subsequent formal implementation of a moderation process was undertaken. Summary of Work: A moderation programme was piloted, then fully implemented across all SSCs. Supervisors of SSCs accounting for 10% of students were randomly selected for moderation. All written work for the selected SSCs was blindly double marked by a member of the SSC team, with knowledge of a wide range of SSCs. Grades were compared with those of supervisors, and discrepancies were discussed until a final grade was agreed. Summary of Results: The vast majority of grades of supervisors and moderators matched. This provided evidence that overall, grades for the written work of SSCs is already largely consistent across a variety of modules. When differences did exist then a mutual agreement was reached. Discussion and Conclusions: Introduction of moderation was regarded positively by supervisors, students and external examiners. While grades tended to be higher in SSCs than in other MBChB components, this is likely to be due to factors including student choice, close supervision and the ability to spend 5 weeks studying a subject intensively. The moderation process has highlighted the varying levels of feedback given and thus has led to the introduction of measures to improve the quality of feedback. Take-home Messages: (1) It is possible to ensure consistency of assessment in an SSC context without needing to standardise the assessment instruments; (2) Piloting the moderation process allowed supervisors and moderators to become familiar with the procedures before full implementation, as well as giving the SSC team time to develop a formal moderation policy, covering procedure to follow in all events; (3) Communication with supervisors and students was key in the success of this moderation process