MEMO

To: / Chairs of Departments
cc / Departmental Examinations Secretaries Academic Registrar Dr J Taylor, Academic Office
From: / Professor M Whitby
Re: / AQSC Working Group on Final Undergraduate Assessment Conventions
Date: / 25 October 2004

You may be aware that the most significant issue identified during the University’s recent Institutional Audit was a perceived inequity in the treatment of students arising from the existence of more than a single set of final undergraduate assessment conventions. The Academic Quality Standards Committee has recently established a Working Group to take forward this matter and is working alongside a Faculty of Science Group, already established to look into the use of the Seymour Formula and the scaling of marks in that Faculty.

The AQSC Working Group has resolved that its work should include an analysis of the effect of considering the marks of students awarded undergraduate degrees in Summer 2004 in line with both sets of undergraduate conventions. To enable this work to proceed, I am writing to all Chairs of Departments to ask you to provide a sample of student mark grids considered at final year Boards of Examiners in Summer 2004 in your department, together with a note of the final classification awarded under your current conventions.

Please note that, whilst this information can be obtained centrally from SITS, we are approaching departments to ask for a student sample in order to avoid selecting students where discretion may have been exercised in relation to a student’s personal circumstances.

The Group expects that the two sets of conventions are unlikely to have any significant impact on candidates in the middle of a degree class. I would therefore be grateful if you could provide a sample of 15-20 students from your department whose marks led to their categorisation as follows:

Ø  Clear 1st class candidates

Ø  1st/2:1 borderline

Ø  2:1/2:2 borderline

Ø  2:2/3rd class borderline

Ø  3rd class

Ø  Pass

Ø  Fail

The second purpose of this memo is to invite feedback from you at this stage of the process. Transposing students’ marks from Arts/Social Studies conventions to Science conventions will be relatively straightforward. This will simply involve determining an average mark. Since candidates in these faculties rarely accumulate more than 120 credits, it will not be necessary to use the Seymour Formula in most cases. The converse will be less straightforward, since the Arts/Social Studies profiling system will need to be applied to a larger number of marks for units which will typically be of smaller and more variable credit volumes. The Working Group proposes that the transposition from Science to Arts/Social Studies conventions be undertaken in two ways:

1.  Using each student’s “best” 8 marks, for a combination of modules whose total credit value ≥120 credits.

2.  Using the relevant course regulations to determine which modules are core, and most closely related to the primary subject of the student’s course of study, for a combination of modules whose total credit value ≥ 120 credits.

Given the variety of potential approaches to the transposition of marks between the two sets of conventions, I would be pleased to receive feedback from you on the Group’s proposed modus operandi. The Group will next meet during the second week of the Christmas vacation, and to enable work to proceed in order for the outcome to be available to the Group at that time, I would be grateful if your mark grids, with selected students highlighted, together with any feedback you may have, could be forwarded to Roberta Wooldridge Smith, Teaching Quality section, Academic Registrar’s office by

Monday 15 November 2004.

Many thanks

Professor M Whitby

Pro Vice-Chancellor

Chair, Academic Quality and Standards Committee

Classics & Ancient History
The University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom
Tel: 024 7652 4974
Fax: 024 7652 4973
Email:


www.warwick.ac.uk