Academic Standards and Quality

Marking Policiesdrama students

Assessment strategy (requirement of all departments)

Departments should develop an assessment strategy for each course, or set of courses, for approval in the annual course review process. The assessment strategy should address the following issues:

  • Diversity of assessment within a course;
  • Coverage of module learning outcomes by assessment methods;
  • The balance between monitored and unmonitored assessment;
  • Approaches to prevent and detect plagiarism in assessment;
  •  Professional Body Requirements, if appropriate;

and in cases of Departments proposing to have modules assessed by 100% coursework:

  • Appropriate use of the academic year;
  • Approaches to assessment for the discipline at other comparable institutions.

Assessment of performance-based coursework (including oral presentations)

Performance-based assessment with a permanent output, capable of being shown to the External Examiner should be subject to the normal policy for essays/assignments, but only where the permanent output relates directly to the assessment criteria. For example, a presentation where output such as a PowerPoint document is submitted would still count as performance-based coursework with non-permanent output, unless a learning outcome being assessed is academic content rather than presentation skill.

Performance-based assessment with a non-permanent output worth up to and including 40% of a module may be single marked. Where this type of assessment contributes to more than 40% of a module, work must be either double-marked, team marked, video/audio recorded or attended by the external examiner based on 100% coverage of the whole cohort.

Assessment of group work

Group work with a permanent output should be subject to the normal moderation process for essays/assignments.

Group work with a non-permanent output should be subject to the policy for the assessment of performance-based coursework.

The maximum amount that a joint mark (where a single group mark is derived from people working together in a group) can contribute to a single module is 25%.

Marks for participation

Marks for participation may contribute no more than 5 percent of the overall mark a module and the marks should relate to a module learning outcome.

Moderation of work-based learning/placement

The University publishes guidelines on work-based learning which state that ‘the assessment of work-based learning/placement should be subject to the normal departmental procedures in respect of moderation and external examining’.

Moderation of study abroad work

The University should take the mark awarded by the host institution and use the established conversion tables to convert the mark to the standard University scale. The External Examiner should have oversight of the marks awarded by a host institution and the conversion used. The External Examiner should be invited to provide comment, through his/her report, if he/she observes any anomalies between the converted marks and the rest of the students’ marks profiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page last updated: 22 July 2013