This is the latest of our twice-weekly newsletters for staff about the work underway to ensure the continuity of Teaching, Learning and Assessment for our students during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today we are providing updates on:  

• Marks and Exam Boards
• Invigilating Assessments
• Academic Integrity
• External Examiner IT Access
• Library support for students
• The National Student Survey

On Tuesday, we launched a new collection of guidance on managing marks and Exam Boards during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This began with an overview of the approach we are now taking and key dates in the coming months, and we are today adding to this with further information on the calculation of postgraduate taught degree outcomes. This approach for postgraduate taught courses will provide a central mechanism for calculating classifications, while recognising that the data required for this varies from that needed for the undergraduate benchmark and that processes are therefore appropriately different.

We will add further guidance in the coming weeks, beginning next week with practical guides on Pre-Boards, Missing Marks Adjustments, Scaling and Mitigating Circumstances Panels. 

We are also forming a network of colleagues in academic departments who lead on managing assessment outcomes and exam boards. We will work directly with these colleagues, who have been identified by Heads of Department, on the implementation of newly published guidance within the department over the coming weeks. In turn, they will continue to be well-placed to disseminate departmental arrangements and be the first point of contact for your queries on assessment matters.

Changes to key dates

Since being published on Tuesday, there has been one change to the timeline of key dates: first-year marks should be shared between departments no later than 15 June (changed from 01 June).

As the first week of the May/June exams session comes to a close, we are continuing to see the considerable value added by staff who are invigilating alternative online assessments that are running through the Alternative Exams Portal (AEP). In particular, the support for swiftly resolving student queries about assessment papers is incredibly helpful when students are first taking assessments remotely. If you are invigilating an upcoming assessment, please take time to read our guidance in advance.

In last week’s student newsletter, we reminded students that engaging in plagiarism, cheating or collusion activity may result in failing their assessment, and, in serious cases, failing their degree. When previously introducing the Safety Net, we made clear that it would not apply if a student has been found guilty of cheating or plagiarism in their Term 3 assessments. 
 
It may be timely to reinforce this message with students as we move into the busiest weeks of online assessments. We would ask for your help with this by reminding your students about the importance of maintaining academic integrity as they prepare for their assessments.

We are working to find a common solution across the University to facilitate external examiners’ access to the information and data they will need to perform their duties ahead of and during the forthcoming exam board season. This would include, for example, samples of student assessed work, marks, and exam board grids. A common solution is necessary as the University strengthens its approach to information security and responds to the risks identified through the recent ICO audit.
 
Our previous approach to granting external access to this information has required individual requests for access. If you already have individual arrangements with your externals, it would be best practice to adapt these so that there is consistency across the University for this session. Where existing access arrangements are in place, we will issue new guidance for reviewing and verifying this access. Details of the process will follow next week, and we would be grateful for your support with this critical element of the assessment process.

After closing on 30 April, we received confirmation of our final response rate, which was 75% for the University overall and above 60% for 26 of 27 academic departments. This compares well to the response rate of 78% in both of the last two academic years and meets our target of 75% this year.

The Office for Students has confirmed that it will continue to deliver NSS largely as planned and this year’s results will be published on Wednesday 1^st July 2020. We will disseminate the data and some initial analysis on the day, and follow up with a fuller report in the weeks after. This falls at an already busy time for confirming marks and running Exam Boards, and as such, we will stagger our approach to making full use of the results.

Last week we moved to send student newsletters once per week on Wednesdays. You can access the student newsletters through the MyWarwick site.