Grade Marking Briefing for Students (Academic Handbook

Title: Grade Marking Briefing for Students
Document Type: Guideline
Location: Academic Handbook Section 4O
Version: 1.3
Publication date: August 2013
Author: Academic Services
Approved by: Dean, Academic Services
Last updated: March 2015
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Grades also match with the Generic Grading
Criteria that you use in your assessments. If
you get a B1 in one assignment, you can use
the grading criteria to show you what to
improve to get an A4 in your next assignment.
What do I have to do?
You don’t have to do anything. All your
assessments will be returned to you with a
grade, apart from exams and some
assignments that have clear right or wrong
answers which will still be in numbers.
4O: Grade
Marking Briefing
for Students
Staff in the faculty offices will change the
grade to a number which will be recorded in
the Student Records System. The following
table shows which grade is linked to which
numerical equivalent.
What is Grade Marking
You’ll get the results of your units back as a
number, and your final degree award will be
calculated from numbers.
Grade Marking is Southampton Solent
University’s assessment marking system. For
most of your assessments you’ll get a grade
(e.g. B2) rather than a number (e.g. 65) when
your work is returned to you. The exceptions
are assessment where you can either be right
or wrong, such as some multiple choice tests,
where you will still be given a mark, and
exams.
FAQs
How do the grades for each element get
combined to give a unit mark? Each grade
corresponds to a numerical equivalent. The
numerical equivalent for each assessed
element will be given its due weighting and
combined to give an overall mark for the unit.
Why is Grade Marking used at
Solent
Will marks for those assessments which
require the full numerical scale i.e. those
where answers are either right or wrong, be
converted to a grade, and then to its
numerical equivalent? No, these will be
recorded as the true mark achieved.
Many universities use a marking system based
on giving marks on a scale of 0-100. However,
research has shown that most tutors only
mark between 35-75%, and that actually,
marks are only reliable to 2-3%. Therefore
having fewer marking points, spread more
widely, means that marking is fairer, and that
your best and worst marks will be better
represented in your final degree mark.
How do marks from Grade Marking and the
full numerical scale get combined? The
numbers from both scales (with due
weighting for each element) are added
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together to produce an overall mark for the
unit.
Where do I get further
information?
You can find out more about Grade Marking
from the Portal and the myCourse page called
Grade Marking 4 Students.
You can ask your lecturers, Faculty Admin
staff, Student Support Network Officers in
your Faculty, and you can also send any
questions
on
Grade
Marking
to
grade.marking@solent.ac.uk
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Generic Grading Criteria Marking Band*
Grade
Mark
Numeric
Equivalent
A1
100
A2
92
A3
83
A4
74
B1
68
B2
65
B3
62
C1
58
C2
55
C3
52
D1
48
D2
45
D3
42
F1
35
F2
20
F3
15
Submitted
S
1
Non-submission
N
0
Exceptional in most / all aspects, substantially
exceeding expectations for this level
Excellent quality, exceeding expectations for this level
in many aspects
Meets all the intended learning outcomes and exceeds
the threshold expectations for this level in several of
them
Meets all the intended learning outcomes and exceeds
the threshold expectations for this level in some of them
Meets all the intended learning outcomes at, but rarely
exceeding the threshold expectations for this level
Fails to meet all of the intended learning outcomes and
is marginally inadequate for this level
Fails to meet all of the intended learning outcomes and
is inadequate for this level
*For the Generic Grading Descriptors broken down by level and skill see:
http://docman.solent.ac.uk/DocMan8/rns?RNS=ASQS/AH/1234573065
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