Formative Internal Quality Assurance

This guide covers formative internal quality assurance (IQA), such as sampling assessment practice.

1. In the candidate list, click View Portfolio for the candidate whose work you want to quality assure.

2. On the portfolio front page, select the green Evidence tab on the right. You'll see a table of all the evidence in the candidate's portfolio.

3. Select the evidence you want to quality assure and click Verify. This makes you the holder of the evidence and adds it to your task list. The evidence must be at Assessment Complete or Action Required status.

   You can now read the primary assessor's feedback, along with any second-line assessment or previous IQA feedback.

   To view the plan without leaving the evidence, click Show Plan at the bottom of the page. Go to Plan takes you to the plan itself and away from the evidence.

   Note: if there are no plan buttons, the evidence isn't linked to a plan. To confirm, click Show Details at the top of the screen. The Plan Created Date will show as (None).

4. When you've sampled enough and are ready to give feedback, click Prepare Feedback.

   You can now write your feedback and record your IQA decision. If action is required, you'll need to set a target date. You can also record which standards you sampled by ticking the box next to each standard linked to the evidence.

   Positive decisions lock the evidence and prevent further assessment (depending on course settings):

   • Agree
   • Not Sampled

   Negative decisions:

   • Assessor to Action: once the assessor accepts the IQA feedback, the evidence moves to Assessing and a new assessment feedback record is created. All previous feedback records are kept.
   • Assessor to assess again: once the assessor accepts the IQA feedback, the evidence moves to Assessing and a new assessment feedback record is created. All previous feedback records are kept.
   • Assessor to revise assessment feedback: once the assessor accepts the feedback, the evidence moves to Assessing and the assessor can edit their latest assessment feedback record.
   • Assessor to revise evidence: once the assessor accepts the IQA feedback, the evidence moves to Revising and the assessor can edit the evidence. Use this to remove invalid attachments or confidential information without sending the evidence back to the candidate first.

5. Click Save Feedback and Close, or Finish Verification if you're a qualified IQA. What happens next depends on whether you are qualified or unqualified.

   Qualified IQA: click Finish Verification. Your feedback goes to the assessor to read and accept.

   • If you agreed with the assessment decision, the evidence status changes to Verified.
   • If action is required, the status changes to SLA or IQA Feedback Given. For more on the options, click Show Help on the page. Once the assessor accepts your feedback, they can update their assessment and/or the evidence links.

   Unqualified IQA: your feedback must be countersigned before it reaches the assessor. Use the Send control at the bottom of the evidence page to send it to a qualified IQA.

   • If the qualified IQA agrees with your feedback, it goes to the assessor to read and accept.
   • Evidence status then changes in the same way as above: Verified if you agreed, or SLA or IQA Feedback Given if action is required.

5.2 Countersigning (second-line IQA)

5.2.1 Click the Second Line Verifying task on your dashboard.

5.2.2 This opens the evidence verified by the unqualified IQA.

5.2.3 Choose one of these options:

• Agree: moves the workflow forward so the assessor can read and accept the IQA feedback.
• Disagree: returns the evidence to the unqualified IQA so they can revise their feedback.

5.2.4 Use Portfolio Comments or Unit Comments to give feedback to the unqualified IQA.

Note: once the assessor has responded to your feedback, a task titled Last IQA feedback was Disagreement appears in your task list. It links straight to the evidence, so you can repeat steps 3 to 5 and check the action has been resolved. If the assessor doesn't address the feedback by the target date, you'll get a task titled Overdue second line assessment or IQA action, which also links to the evidence so you can follow it up.