Dear All,
I would be grateful for advice on practices at different institutions
for handling illegible examination scripts .
My institution currently regulates that examination scripts, or parts
thereof, that are illegible will receive a mark of zero (this does not
cover students with diagnosed special requirements, for whom special
arrangements are in place). This is not a recently added or amended
regulation, and the issue has not previously been highlighted .
Two external examiners have recently described surprise at our policy,
and one writes that "normal practice" elsewhere is to require students
whose scripts are generally deemed to be illegible to have them typed out.
I would be interested to know :
a) Whether other institutions apply marks of zero in cases of illegible
exam scripts and, if not, what other policy applies; and,
b) How, in institutions where transcription of illegible scripts is the
norm, this is managed (charges for transcription, independence of
transcriber, students not deliberately making their writing illegible to
create opportunities for later revisions, etc).
We briefly discussed the idea of a process through which students who
acknowledge that they have poor handwriting could notify the institution
in advance, and perhaps be given use of a computer for the exam.
However, concerns were expressed that this would be open to abuse by
students who could type faster than they (or others) could write, and
that many students with genuinely poor handwriting would not notify the
institution, returning us to the original problem.
I would be happy to circulate a summary of responses if this will be
helpful.
With thanks and best wishes,
Simon
--
Simon Hayter
Assistant Academic Registrar for Examinations & Assessment Governance
Academic Registry & Council Secretariat
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS
tel: +44 (0)20 7882 2771
fax: +44 (0)20 7882 3714
email: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.arcs.qmul.ac.uk
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