Choosing subjects for benchmarking assessment

Considerations

When planning for benchmarking of assessment, here are some points to consider:

• Identify subjects for benchmarking that will be reviewed in courses under review in the following year.
• Choose subjects that may feed into multiple courses so that a broader range of courses can be covered with one subject.
• Choose subjects for review in the current year from those delivered in the latter part of the previous year or the first half of the current year. This is because it can be difficult to get reviewers later in the year.
• If a sessional staff member taught the subject you are considering, think about whether they are still employed or if they will need a contract to retrieve the information and prepare it for review given the time frames needed for benchmarking to occur.
• Assign the staff member to the subject who has access to the assessment tasks and student work samples from the last delivered session. Do not assign a staff member who does not have access to previous assessment samples.

Unsuitable subjects

Subjects are poor choices if:

• they are being phased out or a decision has been made to rewrite the subject completely with no relevance between current and future assessment
• new subjects that have no past student work samples available
• assessment tasks cannot be de-identified or infringe on student privacy, for example, video or online materials where the student is visible or can be identified.