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Supporting Effective Continued Professional Development (CPD) with RM Compare
The assessment challenge
Maybe it’s just the nature of the system, but teachers often work in silos. This makes it hard for them to gain insight into the assessments that other teachers are doing - even within the same subjects. What ends up happening is that teachers lose sight of the assessment standard, especially when working across more than one school.
Most, if not all teachers will be familiar with moderation meetings. This existing approach tries to maintain the assessment standard, but let’s face it, it’s far from ideal. Teachers have to rush out at the end of the day to meet up for moderation, or perhaps some training. They might even have to take time out from their already very busy teaching day to do this. Finding cover and preparing work that will keep their class from running while they’re not there. And what if not all teachers can make the moderation meeting? Was there meant to be a staff meeting tonight too? Argh!
It’s time-consuming, costly and can exclude some teachers from taking part, but it’s the best we’ve got, right? Wrong!
RM Compare is a Better Way
We’ve built RM Compare around a proven assessment methodology called adaptive comparative judgement or ‘ACJ’. It’s deceptively simple. It allows groups to evaluate student’s work in successive pairs online, ordering them at the end. A bit like moderation, right?
Does the work on the left meet the criteria more than the work on the right? Click. What about this next pair? Click. And this one? Click. Which piece of work came out on top?
Not only is this an extremely effective way of assessing, it’s really collaborative. This makes RM Compare a brilliant tool to support continued professional development (CPD), sharpening assessment skills and developing a shared understanding of the assessment standard. Doubly-useful!
Student’s work is presented anonymously to the teachers in the group. What’s more, the student’s work can be set up to include any number of schools, wherever they happen to be – in your town, in your country, or even in another country. All of this exposes teachers to a really wide range of student work across the cohorts and schools involved.
Better CPD includes modern teaching practices
Not only is this way of assessing intuitive, it creates greater understanding of what makes a piece of work ‘ok’, ‘good’, or ‘great’. And, this is reached collectively across the group.
If anybody wants to see ‘behind the curtain’ and understand why each decision was made, teachers can choose to write their rationale behind each choice, so RM Compare can show how each evaluation fits the big picture.
Better quality CPD, a more intuitive approach to assessment, a broader view of student’s work. And all without having to leave the classroom. Or even your sofa.