Degree Classification & Transcripts Policy

Rationale for not including Semester 2 marks in Part averages

When we classify your degree we have to ensure that students with the equivalent levels of achievement are rewarded with the same outcome. We have to do this within programmes, but also across programmes so that a given classification in one subject reflects achievement equivalent to that reflected in the same classification in another subject. We also have to reflect your achievement fairly in comparison with previous years in order for your degree to have the same standing and value. We expect the proportion of students with each degree class to be broadly similar year on year, so we use this as a guide to maintain standards when we look at your marks.  

This year, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has required us to make some changes to how we assess and how we classify degrees. Nevertheless, we have a duty to you to ensure that degree quality remains the same as in previous years (and our external regulator, the Office for Students, requires that we do so). We have therefore tried to stick as closely as possible to the key parts of our usual processes for degree classification so that everyone concerned, including you, can be sure your degree has the same value as degrees awarded in the past. We have used whole module marks for completed modules because they are the most reliable marks; we have kept the same definition of academic credit; in cases where all originally planned assessment couldn’t go ahead we haven’t re-weighted work already completed to try to get whole module marks; and we have tried to be sensitive to the conditions under which some of the Semester 2 work was completed. However, as a result, we have not been able to use your Semester 2 marks for this academic year in the traditional way, and this document explains why.

Generating module marks

Usually when we classify a degree, we do so based on whole module marks. Within a module some assessments generally lead to higher marks than others. Overall the weighted sum of the marks for each assessment shows how well you achieved the module learning outcomes. 

Example 1

In a module there are 3 assessments worth 10%, 40% and 50% respectively. Students generally find the 40% assessment rather hard. A typical marks profile for the module looks like: 75, 55, 65. Overall the module mark is given by (75 x 10 + 55 x 40 + 65 x 50)/100 = 62. The first very strong performance is balanced by lower marks in the later assessments, but the overall mark is not over influenced by the difficult assessment in the middle.

The effect of partial assessment of a module

Using only some of the assessment for a module can lead to grades that are much higher or lower than would be achieved for the whole module.

Example 2

If we had stopped assessing after the first assessment in the example above, the only mark we would have is a mark of 75; much higher than the final mark and not very representative of the student’s outcome on this module. Perhaps the assignment was an easy one to get going with? If we stopped assessing after the second assignment and re-weighted the assessments to make a whole module mark, we would have (75 x 10 + 55 x 40)/50 = 59. This rather underestimates the student’s final position.  

The Office for Students, the external regulator which looks after students’ interests, require us to maintain the overall quality of the award. If we use a process that either inflates or deflates grades it calls the value of the degrees awarded this year into question compared to those awarded in previous or future years.

The timing of the cut-off date

Different modules have different assessment patterns, so if we use a cut-off date that is not related to the deadlines for submission, students on the same programme who chose different option modules with the same assessment structure might benefit differently, simply due to the timing of assessment deadlines. 

Example 3

Suppose two students on the same programme with the same Semester 1 average took different modules in Semester 2, but each module had a 20% coursework, a 30% coursework and a 50% coursework. Both 20% courseworks were submitted at the end of February but the 30% coursework for one module was due on 21 March, (before the cut-off date of 22 March), and for the other module was due on 23 March, (after the cut-off). Both students got a mark of 65 for the 20% coursework, 60 for the 30% coursework and 55 for the 50% coursework. One student gets a mark of 65 included in their no detriment position. The other student gets a combined mark from the 65 and the 60 in their no detriment position.

There are two problems related to the previous example:

Firstly, if we take the coursework marks based on the pre 22 March assessments for the two students and try to turn them into module marks, we have effectively re-weighted completed coursework, and we said we would not do that. Worse, we have re-weighted it differently for each student, one of whom will have a mark of 65 while the other has a mark of 62 (weighted average of 65 and 60).

Secondly, if we do this, one student gets a higher contribution to their no detriment mark than the other. When we get to the enhanced classification both have the same mark for the module, so the same enhanced classification position, but we have said that students can take the higher of the no detriment and enhanced classification positions, so the first student still gets a better mark.

Weighting with credit

To solve the problems of Example 3, we could think about adjusting the partial module marks when we use them for the no detriment average, to account for one student having done more assessment than another, but it isn’t obvious how to do that.

When we use whole module marks, we weight the marks by the module credit to get the average. This means the mark for a 30 CATS module influences the final Part average twice as much as the mark for a 15 CATS module.

Credit is a measure of student effort based on how long it might typically take to achieve the module learning outcomes. Each credit indicates about 10 hours of study. It is based not only on formal contact hours but also on the time typically needed for: preparation for formal contact; private study; completion of formative assessment tasks and revision[i]. Note that the definition, which is an agreed scheme for all UK universities outside Scotland, does not include time spend on summative assessment. We would have had to devise a new relationship between partial assessment and partial credit.

Credit isn’t normally awarded incrementally; all the credit for a module is awarded when you achieve all the learning outcomes[ii] by completing all the assessment for the module successfully. Credit also doesn’t have a direct relationship to assessment weighting, and it is not as simple as saying a 10% coursework gets you 1.5 credits. After all, a lot of coursework takes longer to complete than sitting a 2-hour exam. If we invented a new relationship between credit and assessment weighting, it would mean we treated your marks very differently to how we have treated students’ marks in the past, and differently even to how we treated marks in Semester 1. That is not something we felt we could do without a lot of careful modelling and testing, which would have been a significant job to complete in a short space of time under difficult working conditions, and we weren’t confident that such a significant revision to our processes could be achieved fairly.

You may still be asking why some other universities have been able to use Semester 2 marks more traditionally without devising a new definition for credit. It’s important to remember that their  programmes and modules may be structured very differently to ours; they may, for example, have far more similar structures across programmes or have standard patterns for module assessment that mean different students will have completed similar amounts of assessment at any given date. This might allow them to work very differently to us and yet still ensure that classification are reliable and comparable across disciplines and that all students are treated fairly.

[i] Higher education framework for England: guidance on academic credit arrangements in higher education in England, QAA, 2008, ISBN 978 1 84482 870 8.
[ii] Academic credit in higher education in England - an introduction. QAA, 2009, ISBN 978 1 84979 035 2.