• February 2023
• February 2022
• February 2021
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• March 2019

February 2022

The following report gives feedback to assist assessors with general issues and trends that have been identified during external moderation of the internally assessed Technology standards in 2021. It provides further insights from moderation material viewed throughout the year.

Contents

• Using Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Templates
• Assessor Support
• Brief development Technology standards
• Stakeholder feedback
• Selection of techniques/procedures
• Communications
• Preparation of materials for moderation

Using Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Templates

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The purpose of the Internal Assessment Evidence Gathering Template is to help teachers identify and record evidence of student achievement seen or heard within the teaching and learning programme. These templates do not signal a reduction in what is accepted for each grade, but rather a means of summarising evidence for reporting achievement when more formal assessment has not been possible.

These templates must be viewed in conjunction with the assessment advice forwarded to schools, in order to ensure that valid, credible and reliable assessment has occurred before the standard is awarded. Further guidance can be found here.

Where evidence gathering templates have been used to identify evidence in lieu of a formal assessment opportunity, these should not be sent in for moderation.

Assessor Support

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The Best Practice Workshops (online and face-to-face) offered by Assessment and Moderation Services continue to be viewed by the sector as significantly contributing to improved assessor practice:

“The workshop helped to review my own knowledge, and great to share ideas.”
“It was great having time to challenge my thinking in assessment.”

Based on the success of the ‘on request’ model and the ability to have targeted support, Assessment and Moderation Services will continue delivering this support model in 2022. Workshops or presentation slots can be requested to provide targeted support to regional or national audiences.

Additionally, we will continue to run the Transforming Assessment Praxis programme, an online course relevant to all subjects which helps assessors learn about re-contextualising assessment resources and collecting evidence in different ways to better meet the needs of learners.

New online subject-specific short courses introduced this year have complemented the traditional workshops. These can be accessed using your Education Sector Logon. Courses available for Technology include:

• Making Assessor Judgements – Generic (91608, 91610)
• Making Assessor Judgements – CMT (91621, 91623)
• Brief Development
• Modelling in Technology Practice
• Planning for Practice
• The Final Brief.

Check the NCEA subject pages on the NZQA website regularly, as more online courses will be added throughout 2022.

More detailed information, including how to request or register for a workshop or online course, can be found on our Assessor Support pages or by emailing workshops@nzqa.govt.nz.

Brief development Technology standards

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Brief development is to build proficiency and understanding of the role of a design brief to guide the proposed outcome. The brief is developed from an initial plan to the final stage.

Students who successfully undertake brief development will include at least one iteration of the brief at a development stage. Early iterations of the brief will include broad attributes that have been identified through stakeholder feedback and research. These broad attributes are developed from an initial idea to become measurable specifications in the final brief.

The final brief includes a short concept statement to explain the purpose of the outcome and clearly show the proposed outcome’s measurable physical and functional specifications.

In brief development, students who have a range of key and wider stakeholders (at least two of each are required) will be able to generate relevant attributes for the outcome and use the stakeholder feedback to develop the attributes into measurable specifications to guide the design and making of the proposed outcome.

Stakeholder feedback

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Students who have access to a range of stakeholders and who were encouraged to ask relevant, open-ended questions, were able to use this feedback to improve their brief, conceptual design and/or prototype.

When students have further summarised the relevant stakeholder feedback and clearly shown how this feedback has informed the development of the outcome, they do well in the generic outcome development and evaluation standards. Students who gain higher grades have often embedded stakeholder feedback and its impact on fitness for purpose as it occurs throughout the submission.

Selection of techniques/procedures

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For standards that have selection as part of the criteria, students who research or trial alternative methods, allowing them to make an informed choice of a technique or procedure, will succeed in meeting the standard’s requirement for selection.

For example, in resistant materials the student might research or trial different welding methods and select the most suitable. In textiles, the student might research or trial different ways of doing a welt pocket and select the most suitable.

The Level 3 standards 91620, 91621 and 91623 require students to use trialling to inform the selection of techniques or procedures.

Communications

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Changes to moderation requirements for 2022

Changes have been made to what schools are required to send in for moderation in 2022. Only 6 samples of student evidence must be sent in, one sample each at N, A, M, E, and two more from A, M, E. There will be no level 1 external moderation, unless requested by the school.

Outcome statements in external Moderation Reports

Moderation Report outcomes are reported using consistency statements. These are not based on a numerical assessment of how many grades the moderator agreed with, but on a qualitative assessment of how the overall judgements align with the standard.

“Consistent” is used where clear and accurate understanding of all (or most) aspects of the standard have been demonstrated. There may be some misunderstandings, but these are minor.

“Not yet consistent” does not imply major issues on the part of the assessor. This is used where a clear understanding is shown of some aspects of the standard, and any issues can be identified and corrected using the feedforward in the Moderation Report.

“Not consistent” is used where there are significant issues with the assessor decisions. This may include issues such as assessment materials not being at the correct curriculum level, or when the intent or criteria of the standard have been misunderstood.

Moderating assessment materials

For most moderation submissions in 2021, the assessment materials were not moderated, as most assessment tasks were variations of the NZQA Approved tasks developed by the Ministry of Education.

NZQA welcomes the submission of innovative assessment tasks. An overview of case studies showcasing how innovative assessment practices have been implemented in schools can be found on the Spotlights homepage, with the full case studies on the Future State section of the NZQA website.

Preparation of materials for moderation

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A large amount of work is submitted for moderation with embedded links to other evidence.

Assessors need to ensure that all the prepared supporting linked evidence, such as voice-over video files, online project management tools, separate testing documents and any other linked document is visible to the moderator. When linked files are password-protected, the access settings should be changed appropriately to allow the moderation process to occur.

This evidence could be included in the submission as screenshots.

Where large volumes of evidence are submitted for moderation, as is the case when submissions contain more than one standard, it is helpful to flag where the evidence occurs for the standard being moderated.

Please click on this link to give your feedback about this report.