Meeting the standard for tourism, hospitality and events: Calibration of Academic Standards (CAS2) workshop

We are thrilled to invite CAUTHE members to attend the second Calibration of Academic Standards (CAS2) workshop to be held immediately prior to the CAUTHE 2018 conference on Sunday 4 and Monday 5 February at the University of Newcastle. As you are aware, institutional benchmarking is now an essential part of the Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) for TEQSA and as such will increasingly dominate your institutions leadership’s thinking. Here’s your chance to get your area and TH&E ahead of the curve.

The workshop is being held over two half-day sessions and participation will involve:

  • Prior to the workshop: approximately 2 hours work to review and rate the validity of a de-identified assessment task and two de-identified samples of student work. Anonymised results will be published and circulated to participants and form the basis for discussions at the workshop.
  • Sunday 4 February:
    • 3:00-6:00pm Calibration workshop (CAS2) for the first nominated learning standard (domain)
    • 6:00-7:30pm Dinner
    • 7:30-9:00pm Discuss draft peer-review responses, issues and experiences to date  (peer-review phase 2 participants only)
  • Monday 5 February
    • 9:00-12:00pm Calibration workshop (CAS2) for the second nominated learning standard (domain)

Calibration aims to foster a shared understanding and consensus about assessments and outcome standards in comparable units being taught at the same AQF level, but in different institutions. It is a multistage intervention in which external peer reviewers examine an assessment task and samples of student work against one or more of the threshold learning standard domains before, during and after a calibration workshop. Calibration workshops have been found to reduce variability across assessors and build assessor confidence.

The first of the series of CAUTHE calibration workshops (CAS1) was held in August 2017. The long-term aim of the workshop series is to address each of the five TH&E learning domains at AQF levels 7 and 9 at subsequent workshops over the next three to four years. The data will inform the revision of the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards (2015) which is to be undertaken five years following publication.

Key benefits include:

  • Help your institution, and your discipline area in particular, meet the new higher education standards introduced by TEQSA in January 2017.
  • Personal and professional development and capacity building through involvement in a calibration process including:
    • Reaching a shared understanding of what it means to meet the minimum standard in a chosen domain
    • Generating a shared understanding about assessments and outcome standards in comparable units being taught in different institutions.
  • Participating in the creation and development of sustainable communities of practice that will improve the quality of teaching and learning in TH&E.

For more see TH&E Standards.

Please email Penny Jose, Project manager at [email protected] by 15 January 2018 if you or a colleague would like to be involved in the workshop.