Academic Calibration

Academic Calibration is an external peer review process of selected higher education topics.

It is an important component of the Award Course Improvement and Accreditation Procedures within the Educational Quality Framework and supports compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework.

Background

Flinders University participates in Academic Calibration together with the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) network of universities: Charles Darwin University, Flinders University, Griffith University, James Cook University, La Trobe University, Murdoch University, University of Canberra and Western Sydney University.

As an inter-institutional quality process, Academic Calibration aims to provide a comparable review and constructive feedback for selected higher education topics, in order to:

demonstrate the appropriateness of the standards of learning outcomes and grades awarded in IRU universities
maintain and improve the academic standards of IRU
enable comparisons of learning outcomes in similar subjects across IRU
promote discussion on good practice in learning and teaching across IRU.

This benchmarking exercise facilitates compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework which expects higher education providers to undertake “regular external referencing of the success of student cohorts against comparable courses of study including … the assessment methods and grading of students” (Higher Education Standards Framework 2015, Section 5.3, Part 4.b.).

Quick links

IRU website

Academic Calibration Procedures

External Peer Review of Assessment: A Guide to Supporting the External Referencing of Academic Standards

External Reviewer Report – Guidance notes for reviewers

The benefits

The primary benefit of evaluating and improving topics is the resulting benefit to students who participate in the topics. Being an active participant in the calibration process also has a number of benefits at academic and organisational level.

Topic coordinators

Academic Calibration provides an opportunity for you to:

reflect on your topic and assessment outside of standard information gathering, metrics, and internal evaluation processes by having the opportunity to seek external feedback from a discipline-based colleague at another institution.
receive an evaluation that either affirms your work or provides useful feedback on how you could improve.
demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement which is beneficial for professional development.
support existing processes such as course review and professional accreditation of courses.

Topic coordinators are encouraged to nominate as calibrators of other IRU topics to experience calibration from both perspectives.

Calibrators

Becoming a calibrator is notable as request for nominations go to all IRU institutions, and you are selected based on your experience in the discipline and your well-developed sense of academic standards.
Calibration is also a good form of professional development and gives you the opportunity to experience and evaluate a topic from your discipline from another institution.
In many cases there have been cross-pollination of ideas, with calibrators learning how they could improve their own topics from the evaluation of others.

Colleges and Universities

Academic Calibration supports compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2015.
Having calibrated topics within your College means you can contextualise assessment and grading of your topics in a broader national context.
Calibration is documented endorsement of the consistency and reliability of your College's assessment and grading methods, comparative to the sector.
Calibration contributes to proactive improvement of topics, continually raising the standard of learning and teaching.

The process

Academic Calibration is a collaborative, transactional process with four key components. Each Innovative Research University (IRU) has an Academic Calibration Coordinator who serves as the facilitator for the process.

1. Engagement

Each university selects topics they would like to calibrate. These are distributed to calibration coordinators at each university to find suitable calibrators.

2. Preparation

The topic coordinator will select one assessment task from the topic and collate student samples and supporting materials relating to the topic. Student samples are de-identified and sent on to the calibrating university.

3. Review

The calibrator receives materials and has a four-week window to evaluate all items and complete an online report. The report is returned to the topic coordinator.

4. Evaluation

Once the review process is complete, a short process evaluation will be filled out by both the calibrator and topic coordinator to allow for continuous review and improvement of the calibration process.