National External Moderation Summary Report for 2008, Semester 2

Prescription: 602 Management Accounting

Introduction

This report provides a national perspective on the moderation of 602 Management Accounting.

Assessment materials from 13 Tertiary Education Organisations (TEOs) were moderated for this prescription. A new moderation report format was piloted, which required moderators to consider four key questions:

• do assessment activities meet prescription requirements?
• are assessments clear, appropriate and fair to learners?
• is there sufficient guidance provided for assessors in assessment schedules?
• are assessor decisions about learner work consistent?

Of the 13 submissions:

• three met all key assessment requirements
• a further three met key assessment requirements but required some modification before next course delivery
• the remaining seven did not meet one or more key assessment requirements and modification/redevelopment before next course delivery and post-assessment resubmission is required.

Key areas where modification or redevelopment was required were:

• assessment activities not meeting prescription requirements (six submissions) generally due to not fully assessing learning outcomes
• insufficient guidance provided for assessors in assessment schedules (three submissions).

Presentation of assessment materials

Two of the submissions did not include all of the required materials. A further three were missing minor pages. Generally, submissions were well presented, easily read and in a logical order. One submission included learner spreadsheets on CD, which allowed moderators a more detailed review of learner work.

Assessment grids

The assessment grid should ensure that all learning outcomes and key elements are evidenced in assessment activities and that learning outcomes are correctly weighted. There was variable quality in the assessment grids submitted. Many of them had insufficient detail to allow assessors or moderators to use them directly in order to confirm prescription coverage and weightings. An assessment grid for assessments that comprise separate tasks or questions for different key elements should show how each question in each assessment activity relates to the learning outcome/key element.

An example with detail for learning outcome one only could look as follows:

This assessment grid clearly shows coverage and correct weightings (within the allowable 10% aggregate variance). Actual marks or percentages for each question could also be included.

Assessment activities

The key considerations for moderators in deciding whether prescription requirements were met were whether tasks:

• assessed all prescription learning outcomes, with appropriate weightings
• were at the appropriate level.

Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes indicate assessment outcomes and specify what learners need to know and be able to do. Key elements indicate assessment coverage and specify how the related learning outcome should be evidenced. Key element assessment evidence should be provided in the context of the learning outcome.

A 10% aggregate variance is allowed in assessment weightings. That is, the percentage variation in total across all learning outcomes should not be more than 10%.

The prescription requires that all learning outcomes be evidenced. Only two submissions fully evidenced all key elements. Where four or more key elements were not fully evidenced, the submission was considered to have not met requirements.

The most aspects not covered were:

• learning outcome 2, key element a (4), generally did not include a budgeted income statement and balance sheet
• learning outcome 2, key element c (4), sensitivity analysis
• learning outcome 2, key element f (10), especially MRP and ABC
• learning outcome 2, key element g (5), use of cost management systems for strategic planning
• learning outcome 3, key element b (6), generally did not include multiple products or limitation.

The requirements of learning outcome 2, key element a) budgeting were the subject of some debate during moderation. Some TEOs required learners to prepare individual budgets with little integration, usually in a test/exam situation. Other TEOs required learners to complete a fully integrated ‘master budget' using a spreadsheet, usually as an assignment. However, both options were accepted by moderators in this moderation round.

Level

Some assessment tasks were below the 600 level with an overemphasis on calculation-type questions and not enough focus on conceptual and analysis-type questions. A number of submissions provided formulae for EOQ calculations, variances and CVP analysis in test and exams. Although this is deemed to be acceptable, in such circumstances, learners should not also be given marks for stating the correct formula.

General guidance about prescription format is available in tertiary circular T2009/004, Appendix 1 (see links opposite).

Assessment conditions and instructions

The key consideration for moderators was whether assessment conditions and instructions were clear, appropriate and fair to learners.

Most assessments gave very clear instructions as to what was required and the marks to be awarded. Generally, submissions included at least one test, one assignment and one final exam. The most common topic for an assignment was preparing budgets, in relation to learning outcome two. Other submissions included assessments that were more appropriately assessed in the controlled environment of test or exams.

Assessment schedules

The key considerations for moderators in deciding whether sufficient evidence was provided for assessors were whether schedules:

• gave examples of learner responses (e.g. model answers and/or a range of appropriate answers, and/or quality criteria for answers) that met prescription requirements
• provided a sufficiently detailed breakdown of marks to ensure consistent marking.

Most submissions included comprehensive marking schedules with adequate guidance given for the mark allocation. However, a few schedules were deficient in parts as they either did not give sufficient mark breakdown or did not include sufficient evidence of expected learner responses. In either circumstance, the marker would need to add detail to the schedule to ensure consistency in their marking. With multiple markers, this could lead to inconsistency. It particularly becomes an issue when learners give only part answers and the marker must determine what proportion of the full mark to allocate.

Two examples of suitable mark breakdowns are:

Question: Due to an adverse event, would you expect XYZ to have under-applied or over-applied manufacturing overhead cost? Explain (six marks).

Marking schedule:

Since a large amount of the manufacturing overhead cost is fixed, the company's actual manufacturing costs would be about as planned (two marks). However, the company's applied manufacturing overhead costs would be less than planned since less productive activity would have taken place in the plant due to the adverse event (two marks). Thus, with a large amount of actual overhead costs and less than planned applied overhead cost, the company would end up the year with an under-applied balance in the Manufacturing Overhead account (two marks).

Or:

Since a large amount of the manufacturing overhead cost is fixed , the company's actual manufacturing costs would be about as planned . However, the company's applied manufacturing overhead costs would be less than planned since less productive activity would have taken place in the plant due to the adverse event. Thus, with a large amount of actual overhead costs and less than planned applied overhead cost , the company would end up the year with an under-applied balance in the Manufacturing Overhead account (one mark for each underlined point = six marks).

Assessor decisions

The key considerations for moderators in deciding whether assessor decisions were consistent were whether:

• marking rewarded a similar quality of work with similar marks
• marking rewarded learner work in a manner consistent with prescription requirements.

Most assessor decisions were consistent with the marking schedule and expectations for this level. In a few cases, the learner samples did not have marks clearly displayed. This made it difficult to verify assessor decisions. It would also be unclear to learners how their marks were allocated and if their whole answer had been considered.

Conclusions

The prescription has allowed flexibility in assessing the learning outcomes. It is pleasing to see that some TEOs have been innovative in their assessments.

Some TEOs are required to resubmit as they have not assessed all key elements. Preparing a comprehensive assessment grid that aligns the learning outcomes/key elements with each of the assessments prior to commencement of delivery may help address this problem.

Some TEOs need to ensure the assessments are at level 6. Having another TEO internally moderate assessments may be helpful in this regard.

Page updated: 16 June 2009