The Process

Delegates for the event were invited to apply for one of the sessions as early as March 5^th. Details of the course were sent to centres across the country that had already applied to use an oral language moderator (OLM) in the summer series of examinations. Delegates chose their preferred venue and applied for the event. On arrival, the delegates were given a pack of materials to support them during the day and to take back to their centres, along with the assessment criteria against which their work during the day would be judged.

The Events

The events were broken into four discrete sections, with detailed information, followed by practical tasks relating to that information. The first session looked at some of the issues relating to the change in function of a support worker both in a classroom and in an examination and what implications this had for the OLM and the candidate. Delegates were then broken into separate groups and given a number of issues to discuss. During their discussions they were asked to provide observers with sufficient evidence that they had understood the issues.

The second session looked at the problems associated with the use of carrier language and structures that can confuse certain candidates. In pairs, delegates were asked to explain the difficulties inherent in certain examination questions and asked to explain the problems associated with previously written examination questions.

The third session looked at the impact of instructional verbs and their importance to the validity of the question and the examination paper as a whole. Delegates were then asked singly to modify two questions without altering the question's validity. They were also asked to explain the issues that they could see.

The final session looked at the ways in which they could feed back information to all those who needed to know what had happened in an individual examination, including the examiner, the awarding body, the invigilator and the examinations officer and how this might be done. Finally, delegates were given the opportunity to ask individual questions about the practical implications of the work.

The Evaluations

Delegates were then given the opportunity to evaluate the day's events. Space was also provided to pass a general comment, some of which can be found below:

It's been brilliant! Thank you.
Excellent day, thank you, very informative and practical
Good training session. Well presented. Knowledgeable presenters.
The training was excellent and very useful. I will use this experience and the materials tp raise awareness of the issues within all curriculum areas. I have been very impressed with this training.
The training was purposeful and relevant. The exercises were thought provoking and interesting. I have enjoyed the whole day.
I have found this to be an extremely useful piece of training. Thank you for an absolutely first class event.
Excellently presented and structured.
I found the course extremely useful and informative.
A grand day out!. Very well put together. Excellent CPD. Many thanks.
Terrific responses to detailed questions

The results of the evaluations can be found by clicking here:
OLM Evaluation Spring 2008
OLM Evaluation Total  Scores
Evaluation of OLM Training