How To - Moderation

Moderation Overview

TLM offers on-demand moderation, which means you can request moderation at any point when you require some feedback.  Most moderation is requested through the Markbook and will be triggered once you have marked all of your student(s) work as complete.  However, we do encourage you to also submit work regularly, especially in the early days when you are new to TLM, to make sure it is of a high standard.  We will give you detailed feedback so that your students may improve their work.  The coursework that students undertake is Pass/Fail, so the feedback can be quite detailed in order to help them.  The quality of their understanding at this stage will help with the externally assessed examination stage.

How to submit work for checking

All moderation work is normally handled through the Markbook.  In the Markbook, you will either be assessing your students as you go, or you will assess them all as a group at the end of a term or section.  You can also assess them via the Learning Site or using our Quick Assessment Tool.  The Markbook for your group will look something like the following image:

You can see here that there are 2 students who currently have no been assessed against any of the Unit criteria.  You can use the Select all button which will highlight them all:

and then press the s or h keys.  This will mark them all as Secure or Higher in your professional judgment.  The Markbook will now reflect this choice.

The students will all be selected still and you will have assigned a grade to all of their work.  For moderation, the entire set of criterion needs to be marked as s or h.  

Controlled Selection

Anywhere within the Markbook, either for the assessment side or requesting certificates, you can select a range of students by using the Ctrl key.  For example, you might wish to select a small sample of students out of the class for moderation and not the whole group.  The following images show how you can use the Ctrl key to select specific students.

In the above image, I have selected some, but not all students.  The yellow highlight shows the students I have selected and the one I have left out.  I can now assign a mark just for this selection.

In the image above, I have selected a few students from the group to print out certificates.

You can now select the Request Awards button, which will change to once it has been clicked.  At this point, it will appear that nothing has happened.  If you click the refresh icon  in the tab at the top of the Markbook you will refresh the view.  This will now show you that the Status of the student's work has now changed from Ready for moderation to a grayed out message Award requested.

This process will have sent a message to the moderation team that you have requested work for these students and this unit.

Moderation

The moderation team will receive an email stating the work and the centre.  Depending on the number of students in the request, the team will request either a sample of student's work, or the entire cohort.  If you are a new centre, we will request 100% of work to make sure it is of a high standard and so that we can properly guide you as to the expected quality levels.  The team will then set a message on their side of the process to say that they are awaiting evidence from you (i.e. for you to provide the requested work) or that they are waiting for a response (they have asked for some additional work or changes to the submitted work).  These messages will appear in your side of the Markbook as below.

Your various units of work will be listed here under Assessment > Award Jobs.  As you can see above, there is a message here from the moderator that they are waiting for the evidence.  You can get the evidence to us how you want, so you can send it, put it on your network (as long as we can get access), put it on our Dropbox account etc.  You can also use the Learning Site as a VLE as the units are tied to the Units that students are registered for, which makes it easier for them to self-assess.  You will work via this system and the generated email messages until the moderation team are satisfied that the work is of a good standard.  If the work is not approved, you will see this when you click on the View Job.

Once the work has been approved, the moderation team will mark it as such on their side of the Markbook and you will then see it completed on your Award Jobs list.  You can then click on  link.

The job will now be marked as complete  If you now click on the View Job you will see the following:

Printing Certificates

Once the Units or the entire course has been approved and moderated, you can then issue certificates for your learners.  You can select all learners and then just press the .  The system will then generate the certificates or awards.  If you wish to select a range of learners, you can use the Ctrl key to select the specific learners you wish to print certificates for as shown in th above section.

You must have the proper paper from TLM for this process.

In order to obtain the correct paper, please contact the TLM Office.  The paper costs 50p per sheet and can be purchased in bulk as required.