Why do you want to assess a moot?

The 2006 survey for the Mooting for learning project showed that summatively assessing mooting is becoming increasingly common – 84% of those institutions that used mooting within the curriculum assessed it, meaning that mooting is assessed in just over 50% of all institutions.

Mooting generally formed part of an overall assessment pattern. Where it accounted for 100% of the assessment regime it related to a discrete mooting module, and even then other aspects of the learning process were being assessed (see What can be assessed in a moot?).

As with any assessment strategy it is important to be clear at the very beginning what it is that will be assessed. Mooting is seen both as a learning process and a skill. It will be remembered that the majority of mooting takes place within a discrete skills module (see Where does mooting take place?), and so it can be surmised that it is skills rather than substance that is being assessed. Quite clearly this can be a perfectly acceptable form of assessment, but it has been suggested that restricting assessed mooting to skills could be a waste (Gillespie, 2007).

Mooting can also be assessed for example as part of problem-based learning activities, where students present their solutions through advocacy (Gillespie, 2007). The 2006 survey noted that there were examples of mooting being used as an innovative assessment tool. In some institutions it was used within a substantive module as an alternative to other forms of assessment; indeed in two institutions students had the option of either mooting or writing an assessment.

Some institutions may be cautious about this, not least because of concerns that a ‘round’ number of students will not choose a mooting option, however it will be remembered that mooting can take place with very few students (see How many students are required?), so this should not be a barrier. There have also been concerns as to the length of time it can take for a moot to be completed (see What are the advantages and disadvantages?), but there is sometimes a misapprehension as to how long it takes to mark, for example, a 2,000 word assignment. Would listening to four students moot necessarily take longer than marking four 2,000 word essays?

When considering whether to use mooting as an assessment tool it is important that the profile of the cohort is borne in mind. When discussing the issue of assessment with module leaders operating mooting it was quite clear that staff thought that mooting was far from the ‘easy’ option (Gillespie, 2007), and indeed many believed that it would be easier to pass a written assessment with minimal effort than a moot. Yet it is also clear that some weaker students believed that a moot was an easy option, in part because they could not foresee how much work would be involved in preparing for it. This led to a higher failure rate, however it would be difficult to say that this is necessarily a problem with mooting, but rather a pointer that staff must be clear with students as to what their expectations are and how complicated mooting can be.

Using mooting as an assessment component undoubtedly introduces some quality assurance issues, especially in terms of consistency of marking and external verification, but these are not insurmountable – possible solutions are explored in What quality assurance issues does the use of mooting as an assessment component pose?.

Last Modified: 26 July 2010