What quality assurance issues does the use of mooting as an assessment component pose?

Mooting, like any oral presentation, raises some issues in terms of quality assurance, especially when it is being used in levels 2 and 3 where a sample of work will usually need to be placed before an external examiner. The two principal concerns that are normally raised here are what work can be given to an external examiner for review, and whether marking is consistent.

Different universities obviously adopt their own rules, but it is submitted that where a moot counts for a significant part of a summative assessment for an award then it is good practice to involve the external examiner. A variety of approaches can be taken. Some institutions require students to hand in the notes or speeches they used during the moot – the difficulty with this approach is that it could lead the students to believe that it is appropriate to write out a speech, which can have a serious impact on the quality of the moot itself.

Other institutions try to record moots, some videoing students and others simply using audio. Whilst this does carry some advantages (most notably allowing remarking or the approval of marks following an appeal), it can have some disadvantages, for example students may feel extra pressure if they know that they are being recorded. The principal disadvantage, however, is undoubtedly cost. Recording moots is not always easy, especially where an institution does not have a permanent mock courtroom. Using a non-fixed camera almost certainly requires someone else to be in the room, since the judge/s cannot possibly film whilst sitting. An additional person in the room adds to the resources required for the module. For this reason some institutions record only audio, but much of a moot presentation is visual rather than audio, and thus it is these aspects which could be the centre of a dispute. There is also the question as to how long recordings are kept (which has a cost implication), and whether it is realistic to ask an external examiner to watch the tapes.

It will be remembered that consistency of marking was considered to be one of the perceived disadvantages of mooting (see What are the advantages and disadvantages of using moots?). It is less clear, however, whether this is necessarily a problem restricted to mooting, since research has suggested that marking can be largely inconsistent in any event (Hanlon et al, 2004). Of course the inconsistency identified there was across institutions, but there has long been concern as to whether marking within a module is consistent, especially where numbers are large and many members of staff are involved (Saunders & David, 1998).

The concern with mooting is undoubtedly that where numbers are large it will often be necessary to have several members of staff sitting as ‘judge’, as it can be extremely demotivating and boring to listen to what is in essence the same moot dozens of time over – will this invariably lead to a disparity of marks? An obvious solution is the creation of marking criteria, but it has been noted that this will not automatically lead to consistency of approaches (Saunders & David, 1998; MacLellan, 2004), and that each member of the team should ideally be involved with the establishment of the criteria so they feel confident at implementing them. Certainly within mooting it is easy to see how criteria could be established. The more detail that is provided, the easier it will be for staff to be consistent, and, if disclosed in advance, it will also provide certainty to the students and an understanding of how they are to be judged.

Obviously the criteria will depend on the circumstances of the module, in particular whether it is an assessment of skills or substance. Cath Crosby and Dave Powell (University of Teesside) have established criteria for a skills module moot – these are displayed below as an example of how criteria could be set out:

Last Modified: 26 July 2010