Assessor pools are most commonly used to allow a single submission to be allocated to more than one faculty member for assessment. The submission can be allocated to one assessor at random from a pre-established pool, allocated to more than one assessor, or can be sent to all assessors in the pool. You can also choose to display or not display the name of the assessor on the student’s ‘My Results’ screen.

Assessor pool options are chosen as an assessment regime on the ‘Edit Assessment Instrument’ screen when you are creating or editing a rubric. (see ‘‘rubrics: Assessment regimes’).

There are distribution options and anonymity options for assessor pools.

There are four distribution options for assessor pools:

Send to all members preserve scores - Each member of the assessor pool receives a submission. All assessors must finish the assessment before the scores are reported.

Send to one member at random - This is not true randomization; each member of the pool receives a submission before the first assessor receives a second submission. The submissions are distributed evenly among the members.

Send to all members report aggregate mean score - When the student is to see an aggregate mean score, assessments must be completed by all assessors in the pool before the results is available.

Send to a specific number of assessors - Select the number of assessors be randomly chosen from the pool. This is not a true randomization. All assessors would receive a submission before the original assessor received a second submission.

There are two anonymity options for assessor pools:

(1) Scoring anonymously - When the assessor pool is set to score anonymously, the student sees the name of the assessor pool instead of the assessor name at the time of submission as well as on the Student Results screen.

(2) Show assessor name - When the assessor pool is set to show the assessor name, the student sees the name of the assessor at the time of submission as well as on the Student Results screen.

Adding assessors to a pool - Select the 'Assessor Pools' option on the Admin drop-down menu. Select an assessor pool from the list. Click the 'Edit' link on the 'Actions' drop-down menu. Edit the members of the pool using the transfer arrows to add and remove names from the right side column.

Creating a new assessor pool - Choose the ‘Assessor Pools’ option from the ‘Admin’ drop-down list. Name your assessor pool with a descriptive name that indicates what it is being used for. For example, the name and description of the pool should indicates which rubric the pool will be associated with. Or, if the pool will be used for multiple rubrics, the name should indicate the distribution scheme.

Using an assessor pool in escalation - When creating an escalation level, you have the option to choose submission to an assessor pool as a scoring option. The assessor pool must be set up prior to setting up the escalation option so that the pool will appear as an option on the 'Assessed elsewhere' drop-down list when creating the escalation level.