Resits

In the academic year 2005/06, one Department adopted a number of measures to improve students' chances in their resits, recognising the 'vacuum' that they may otherwise be working in:

1) As soon as exam results were out, the UG Director wrote to students who needed to do resits (at Essex and permanent addresses):

Urging them to keep their email account at Essex open/active and checked;
Advising that their module supervisor will e-mail them through their Essex account to arrange an appointment for either a face-to-face meeting or a discussion over the telephone or by e-mail in order to provide advice and guidance on revision for their September exams.

2) A list of modules and students with resits was circulated to teaching staff, and teachers with resit students were asked to:

Contact the affected students;
Offer to meet with those students (or communicate via telephone or email) to discuss their performance, including looking over their scripts, and giving advice on how they could improve, as well as revision guidance (staff were able to retrieve exam scripts with their marks from the UG Office to discuss with the students, but the students were not allowed to remove scripts from the staff office).

3) In some cases, staff ran classes or workshops where there were several students affected to help with revision.

It was felt by staff involved that the contact alone during the summer helped to motivate students.

NB. For departments that may consider adopting this or a similar practice, it is worth pointing out that there are a few logistical issues with handling scripts and marks, such as removing candidate numbers so as not to reveal both numbers and names.