Dear Simon
In our academic standards guidelines we deal with this as follows:
The responsibility for determining that a script is illegible resides with the Board of Examiners
At its discretion the BoE may require the student (at their own expense) to reproduce the answer in legible form, with a timescale specified by the BoE
The original script should be retained for comparison.
Hope this helps
Miv
Miv Fagg
Senior Assistant Registrar
(Assessment & Awards)
University of Surrey
Guildford
GU2 7XH
T: +44 (0)1483 689031
F: +44 (0)1483 683811
-----Original Message-----
From: ARC Assessment Practitioners Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon Hayter
Sent: 14 January 2011 14:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Handling illegible examination scripts
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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