Te Mahi Ako | Kaiaromatawai (Assessor) Newsletter | July 2024

Kia ora tātou!

Welcome to the winter edition of our Te Mahi Ako Assessors Newsletter ❄️ Hopefully it’s not too chilly where you are – unless you’re on the slopes and are needing that chill factor.

As always, we appreciate all the mahi you do in the assessor space and thank you for the amazing job you do! If you are a new assessor, welcome on board the waka! We aim to send out our assessor newsletter once a quarter so keep an eye out for it in your inbox.

TMA staff updates

A reminder about Emma’s role

We have recently welcomed Emma Lindsay to our team. Emma is here to help new and old assessors alike with all things Skills Activator (Moodle) and the credit reporting portal. Need help with either of these tools? Email Emma by clicking the button below.

Assessor forums

Online forums are coming!

The online assessor forum option was a really popular option; the majority of people selected this as their preferred option! To make the online forums run smoothly, we have decided to offer four separate sector specific online sessions. Invitations should be sent out any day now.

Future professional development ideas

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in attending our face-to-face assessor forums this year! Unfortunately, due to low numbers the only in-person forum that went ahead was Christchurch. We had a great time in Christchurch – thanks so much for having us!

While there was a lot of interest in meeting face-to-face, the timing of the events either did not suit you or work was just too busy to get away, which we completely understand. We’re seeking your feedback on what our forums could look like in the future, and what times might work better for you.

Here’s a few thoughts from our team as a starting point:

• Prerecorded online mini sessions with specific topics
• Online industry-specific forums (2–3 hours)
• Prerecorded assessor refreshers
• Tips and tricks from your senior assessor mentors
• Q&A session – send us your curly assessor questions in advance and we’ll answer them live

If you have suggestions about future forum ideas or any questions about any of the content, please get in touch at assessors@temahiako.org.nz. We look forward to hearing from you!

Resources for assessors

Evidence verifier course

Evidence verification is a great way for day-to-day evidence to be captured and documented when you, the assessor, are not present. Compliance around evidence verification is required by Toi Mai. To meet our compliance, we need you to support your evidence verifiers to complete this short online course to meet our requirements.

Resources highlight: Achieve eLearning

In our last edition, we shared our Disability Action Plan, which outlines how Te Mahi Ako supports disabled ākonga.

This time around, we want to share a couple of free resources from Achieve eLearning. TMA is a member of Achieve and uses the Achieve Kia Ōrite toolkit to help our staff to become more confident with disability and impairment in the workplace. As a professional member of the Achieve group, we support and enable the development of these free online courses. If you are interested in these short courses, click the button below to read more.

Marking best practice

Best practice for marking

• Maintain a 10 working day turnaround from ākonga submission of assessment
• Provide clear, supportive and constructive feedback
• Frequently refer to your assessor guide – use the assessor final check at the back of your assessor guide
• Check the assessment matrix as you may be able to mark and report credits as modules are completed
• If you’re having technical issues, log a helpdesk request or email Emma. 
   

Once again, ngā mihi nui (a big thank you) for your mahi. Te Mahi Ako highly value the work you do to support and assess our ākonga and look forward to seeing many of you online at the upcoming Assessor forums.

Mā te wā
Lizzie, Lee and Emma