What is a Moderator?
Moderators are individuals with demonstrable knowledge in a given field. Moderators rate the ‘moderated articles’ before they are loaded onto the site.
One does not need to be an academic to be a moderator. Experienced practitioners can also rate an article.
Why are Moderators important?
The most important part of knowledge transfer is quality. It is important to ensure that the moderated material (the material purporting to be new knowledge) be held to a high standard. Our goal is not be another peer-reviewed journal.
However, we want the members of our community to have a sense of the quality of the material that they are consuming, based on a universal standard.
Who can be a Moderator?
The scoring is standardized by using TAPUPAS. So, an understanding of what it is and how it works is really the most important thing. If you want to be a moderator, you will have to watch a video on TAPUPAS and mock score 3 articles whose TAPUPAS scores have already been determine to see if you understand how to do it.
We will also try to ensure that moderators are rating material within subjects with which they are familiar.
How does it Work?
Feedback
Feedback is always important. Here, moderators can provide material feedback to the author of moderated articles. This feedback goes directly to the author. The feedback should be specific to the material presented and not a conjecture of the moderator’s personal opinions.
The other type of feedback on this site is the TAPUPAS score. This score is a measure of quality. The purpose of this score is to provide the reader with a sense of the epistemological rigor of the material they are reading. The moderator scores will be normalized and the average overall score will be shown. (This feature is coming soon)
Scoring
As a Moderator, you will have to measure the quality of the article using TAPUPAS. A five-point scale will be used to rate each TAPUPAS element of the article as either 1 – Very Poor, 2 – Poor, 3 – Average, 4 – Good, or 5 – Excellent. These appraisal ratings are then totaled and presented as a total score for each article. Scores will be categorized as Low (0 – 11), Medium (12 – 23), and High (24 – 35).
Each TAPUPAS element will be averaged across the moderator scores to present an average total score.
Why TAPUPAS
According to
Long, Grayson, & Boaz, (2006), TAPUPAS appraisal provides a standardized framework for constructively assessing the quality of
evidence in a body of knowledge. We use it on this site because it provides the reader with some level of granularity with respect to quality. Otherwise, the reader would have no basis for understanding the quality of the material that they are reading.
A simple score, or subjective rating (high, medium, low) does not effectively inform the reader about the material. An article may transparent and accessible without being accurate. The TAPUPAS scoring allows the reader to know where an article is weak and where it is strong.
Use this guide for understanding TAPUPAS
· Transparency: the process of knowledge generation should be open to outside scrutiny. For knowledge to meet this standard, it should make plain how it was generated, clarifying aims, objectives and all the steps of the subsequent argument, so giving readers access to a common understanding of the underlying reasoning.
· Accuracy: all knowledge claims should be supported by and faithful to the events, experiences, informants and sources used in their production. For knowledge to meet this standard, it should demonstrate that all assertions, conclusions and recommendations are based upon relevant and appropriate information.
· Purposivity: the approaches and methods used to gain knowledge should be appropriate to the task in hand, or ‘fit for purpose’. For knowledge to meet this standard, it should demonstrate that the inquiry has followed an approach that is appropriate for meeting the stated objectives of the exercise.
· Utility: knowledge should be appropriate to the decision setting in which it is intended to be used, and to the information need expressed by the seeker after knowledge. For knowledge to meet this standard, it should be ‘fit for use’, providing answers that are as closely matched as possible to the question.
· Propriety: knowledge should be created and managed legally, ethically, and with due care to all relevant stakeholders. For knowledge to meet this standard, it should present adequate evidence, appropriate to each point of contact, of the informed consent of relevant stakeholders. The release (or withholding) of information should also be subject to agreement.
· Accessibility: knowledge should be presented in a way that meets the needs of the knowledge seeker. To meet this standard, no potential user should be excluded because of the presentational style employed.
· Specificity: the knowledge must pass muster within its own source domain, as perceived by its participants and proponents.
(Pawson et al. 2003 in Long et al. 2006: 210)
