grading assistance for staff

DIVISION OF HUMANITIES

Returning your Unit Grades:
How to Do It [Part 1] June 2007

Marking and grading within the Division is departmentally-based: in the first instance, grades are collated and approved by Departments before being submitted to the Division. All examiners and markers should read the following material carefully.

FOR ALL UNITS

FOR UNDERGRADUATE UNITS

FOR POSTGRADUATE UNITS [Part 2]

APPENDICES:
LIST OF AUTHORISED GRADES
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR I GRADES

FOR ALL UNITS

1 If you are an examiner (that is, the convenor of a unit) then you are responsible for seeing that the scores for your students are returned to your Department Administrator for entering in the Student One exams module.

You may return your results as a spreadsheet on disk, or in printed form. You can download your classlist from StudentOne - import them as Excel files; or check with your Department Administrator to see if there is a list already downloaded for you.

You should return your results in the form of raw scores to your DA as soon as you have completed marking - do not wait until departmental exam meetings. (And remember, there is no need to convert them to percentages - assuming you have ensured, as we recommend, that your assignment marks do not total 100.) Attach the Unit Results Return cover sheet. There you will find two sections:

Section A has space to record where the cutoffs lie for each of the grades (see Section 2 below), and (for undergraduate units only) space to record the top 3 placegetters.

Section B provides information for our Assessment Quality Database, which will assist the Division when it meets to recommend our Grade Distributions to Academic Senate.

2 The basic guide for grading is ...

the advice originally circulated to Humanities staff in February 2001 and now revised to incorporate the latest University policy. It is currently available at http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/MQUonly/new_grades.html

Make sure you have a copy handy, and refer to it if in any doubt.

In advising your DA of the grade cut-offs, the distribution of grades shown in Table 1 below should normally apply if your unit has a total enrolment of 40 or more. (Note that the percentages are of all grades.)

*Table 1:* Recommended Percentage Distribution of Grades
	HD	D	Cr
100 level	3% ± 2%	11% ±4%	23% ± 5%
200 level	3% ± 2%	12% ± 4%	25% ± 5%
300 level	4% ± 2%	14% ± 4%	28% ± 5%
400/500 level	5% ± 2%	20% ± 4%	40% ± 5%
800 level & above	8% ± 5%	20% ± 10%	45% ± 15%

Units with 40 or more students would not normally expect to fail more than 20% of the candidature.

3 The grades that you award (or, strictly, recommend) must be taken from the list below. Note that you can't enter FW, W or NE - these are administrative grades recommended after consultation between the Registrar and Dean.

If your department accepts your grades, and the Division concurs, then they are certified by the Dean and sent to Academic Senate for consideration at its Special Meeting. (It is possible, though rare, for Senate to reject our recommended grades.)

FOR UNDERGRADUATE UNITS

4 If the grade distribution you wish to recommend for a unit is outside the tolerances given in table 1 above (the primary guideline) and the Record of Previous Performance (secondary guideline), you will need to present a written justification (300 words or fewer) to your Head of Department prior to your Departmental examiners' meeting. Providing a written justification is important because it allows those who consider your recommendations at Departmental, Divisional and Senate level to know the educational rationale for your decisions. In your justification, student performance should be considered against unit objectives and assessment criteria (relevant sections from the unit guide may be appended). Validation for your comments should also be provided in the form of (a) samples of student work; and, or (b) evidence of consultation about your recommendations with another staff member in your discipline or a cognate area.

5 Requests for Special Consideration
You may receive requests from students for special consideration; some of these might claim "unavoidable disruption" such that the students cannot complete work in time or sit for the scheduled examination.

All such requests should be accompanied by relevant documentary evidence which verifies unavoidable disruption as defined on page 40 of the Handbook of Undergraduate Studies. Senate has further agreed that it will treat as unavoidable disruption cases where students have been prevented from attending a compulsory examination because
- they are representing Australia at an international sporting or cultural event
- they are a member of the armed forces involved in compulsory exercises
- they are in full-time employment and required to be overseas by their employer
In addition, the Division recognises the following cases:
- they may be travelling overseas on student exchange as part of their degree program
- they are representing the University at an Intervarsity event
If the student is asking for certain factors to be taken into account when we recommend the grade, or is seeking an Incomplete result (a grade of I or IS), then the request should be made to the Registrar via the Student Centre. We will then consider the case at Departmental level and at Undergraduate/Standing Committee.
In rare cases, the student may request that they sit a compulsory examination earlier than the scheduled date, or substitute some other assessment for it.
- If their request falls under one of the unavoidable disruption categories listed in the Calendar or noted above, and it is not possible for them to complete their work late (with an I or IS grade), then you may advise the student to submit a pink request form (with the appropriate documentary evidence).
- You might appropriately recommend early assessment (rather than the expected late completion with an I or IS grade) in cases where
  - the student was leaving Sydney and not returning to study at Macquarie in the following semester
  - where the student had advance notice of long-term hospitalisation beginning during the examination period (and this might include the expected arrival of a baby during the scheduled exams)
- You should sign your recommendation on the form, and specify what alternative arrangements you are prepared to make, and submit it to the Dean's office. We stress that the normal procedure would be to recommend an Incomplete grade, with a Supplementary Examination later than the scheduled paper; pink forms will be approved only in unusual circumstances.
You should not lead students to believe that they will be permitted to sit early examinations, or that compulsory exams can be set aside for alternative assessment as a matter of course. In particular, students should be made aware that semester does not finish until the end of the examination period -- they should not make plans to be away from the University while examinations are still in progress.

6 When you submit your results to your DA (section 1 above), you will need to ensure that EACH student has a grade submitted against their name. Blanks are not permitted. You cannot enter or make changes to a FW or W. These results are entered by Academic Programs Section. Do not give these a mark. Other results may be a percentage score, or a grade of FA, I or IS. (Students with FA grades should also have percentage scores submitted at the same time, to indicate their progress before the examination.) Before handing over your results, you will need to check each name against your records of special consideration requests during the semester and/or the medicals file (these are recorded in the Enquiry Office and distributed to Department Administrators) to confirm that, as far as possible, your recommendations for F, I and IS grades are valid. Note that no I or IS grades should go to the Division Meeting unless a request for special consideration has been filed with the Registrar and passed on to the Division. All extensions of work you gave students should have been resolved by now, unless such a formal request has been filed. For any I grades that you do wish to recommend, fill out the Recommendations for Incomplete Grades form, and pin it to your result sheets. (Note that Undergraduate/Standing Committee, which meets a week after the Division to resolve queries on the results, will change to F any invalid Incomplete grades which may have been submitted.)

7 After your departmental exam meeting grade distributions will be collated and submitted to the Division, for consideration at the Special Examination Meeting of the Division on 4 July 2007 at 11.00 am in W6A 107.

8 Undergraduate Committee/Standing Committee will meet on the morning of 11 July 2007 at 10.00 am in W6A 107 to make late recommendations on results. Please make yourself available to resolve any queries on your grades. If you do not plan to be in your room that day, please leave your contact number with the Department Administrator and make sure that you have attendance rolls, assignment marks etc. by the phone with you. If you would like to attend Undergrad Committee, you'd be welcome - consider yourself invited.

Ideally, there should be a formal and central record in your department of the marks of each of your students. But at Undergrad Committee, we may require your particular advice on whether a student should be permitted to graduate, or whether you were aware of a student's illness, and so on.