What....? Consensus moderation? But, you're probably doing it already!

Abstract

Consensus moderation has been advocated as a mechanism by which universities can ensure the consistency and appropriateness of their academic standards. Unfortunately, for many academics, the term “consensus moderation” has no tangible meaning, while for others the term has only a narrow meaning. This is unhelpful when attempting to implement broader use of consensus moderation as a central component of academic quality assurance. This paper reports on research that maps the term “consensus moderation” to a time-line of eight levels of activity academics routinely engage in. Example practices are provided as a way to help people to realise that, in fact, many consensus moderation practices are already in common use – without those using them realising. Surfacing this realisation is a key component to reducing the “ad hoc” quality of some of these practices, systematising their use and thereby extracting more purposeful and deliberate benefit from them.