Standard of Supplement exams

newacc2015 · 09-09-2015 11:22pm #1

I just had a supplemental exam. I emailed the lecturer about 2 weeks before the exam to make sure I was revising properly etc. I was told the exam would be like the Summer Exam and previous years. I opened the exam to find a new completely new question(not in our tutorials and my friend couldnt remember seeing it either in the lecture slides). There was a question from a tutorial,but still unexpected,as it was a minor topic and I was basically told it would be based from the past papers.

Is it the norm for a lecturer to decide to pull a 180 in the supplementals? I know some lecturers like to make them more challenging. But I personally think 25% of a paper completely unlike 10 years of past papers is a bit much

Did anyone else have a supplemental, that was significantly harder than their summer exam? Is this the norm?

allybabe84 · 11-09-2015 2:43am

newacc2015 wrote: »

I just had a supplemental exam. I emailed the lecturer about 2 weeks before the exam to make sure I was revising properly etc. I was told the exam would be like the Summer Exam and previous years. I opened the exam to find a new completely new question(not in our tutorials and my friend couldnt remember seeing it either in the lecture slides). There was a question from a tutorial,but still unexpected,as it was a minor topic and I was basically told it would be based from the past papers.

Is it the norm for a lecturer to decide to pull a 180 in the supplementals? I know some lecturers like to make them more challenging. But I personally think 25% of a paper completely unlike 10 years of past papers is a bit much

Did anyone else have a supplemental, that was significantly harder than their summer exam? Is this the norm?

Hi, I sat a language supplemental exam last week, out of 4 questions one had nothing to do with the content we learned, while the summer exam was normal. Doubting myself I attempted the question anyway not knowing what I was doing.. Two days later I emailed my tutor and explained that I thought there was a mistake on the paper... turned out the department had made a mistake and they are going to disregard the question and grade me on the other 3, with some bonus points for attempting the wrong question.
So if you're in doubt please contact your tutor so he / she can check for you... Hope this helps

newacc2015 · 11-09-2015 10:23pm

allybabe84 wrote: »

Hi, I sat a language supplemental exam last week, out of 4 questions one had nothing to do with the content we learned, while the summer exam was normal. Doubting myself I attempted the question anyway not knowing what I was doing.. Two days later I emailed my tutor and explained that I thought there was a mistake on the paper... turned out the department had made a mistake and they are going to disregard the question and grade me on the other 3, with some bonus points for attempting the wrong question.
So if you're in doubt please contact your tutor so he / she can check for you... Hope this helps

Thanks for the reply! I have been calling my tutor for 2 days without a response. We covered the 2 questions. But they arent usually the topics examined in the exams(eg Q1 is x Subject, Q2 is another subject). They are the same type of question without fail. But in the supplement, it was 2 completely different topics to the summer exam and 7 years of past papers.
Did the lecturer cover the fourth question, you struggled to answer

Ill keep calling my tutor

allybabe84 · 11-09-2015 11:50pm

newacc2015 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply! I have been calling my tutor for 2 days without a response. We covered the 2 questions. But they arent usually the topics examined in the exams(eg Q1 is x Subject, Q2 is another subject). They are the same type of question without fail. But in the supplement, it was 2 completely different topics to the summer exam and 7 years of past papers.
Did the lecturer cover the fourth question, you struggled to answer

Ill keep calling my tutor

It sounds similar to mine, because question 1 and 2 are questions on the same topic in the summer exams (I'm doing Latin, so question one and two are usually both on Cicero and question 3 on Ovid, that's how it is in the summer exam papers but my supp exam had Pliny for question 2, which we never did....) But from looking back at old exam papers Pliny was on the curriculum before 2009, plus the layout was the same too as the supplemental exam, so I'm thinking they just reused one of these old exam papers by accident.... I hope you get sorted out, maybe the senior tutors office could help you out if you can't get in contact with your own tutor??

newacc2015 · 12-09-2015 10:53am

allybabe84 wrote: »

It sounds similar to mine, because question 1 and 2 are questions on the same topic in the summer exams (I'm doing Latin, so question one and two are usually both on Cicero and question 3 on Ovid, that's how it is in the summer exam papers but my supp exam had Pliny for question 2, which we never did....) But from looking back at old exam papers Pliny was on the curriculum before 2009, plus the layout was the same too as the supplemental exam, so I'm thinking they just reused one of these old exam papers by accident.... I hope you get sorted out, maybe the senior tutors office could help you out if you can't get in contact with your own tutor??

That sounds pretty similar to my problem! But they were never an exam question before. He completely changed the layout of the exam and I think I read somewhere, you have to tell the students about it. But Im not 100% sure Ill give my tutor until Monday and then Ill call the Senior Tutor.

NormalBob Ubiquitypants · 12-09-2015 11:16am

Did you say it to the invigilator? If there is a mistake or something wrong on the paper they are able to get the examiner on the phone within 5 minutes.

newacc2015 · 12-09-2015 2:51pm

NormalBob Ubiquitypants wrote: »

Did you say it to the invigilator? If there is a mistake or something wrong on the paper they are able to get the examiner on the phone within 5 minutes.

I dont think it was a mistake. It was just a lack of thought from the part of the lecturer. It was his first year teaching this. Instead of the questions being X topic as always. He completely changed it to something else on the course, that was barely covered in the lecture. Looking at his notes and the book. There is literally no way we could answer that question. I even emailed the lecturer about 2 weeks before the exam and he told me it was going to be very similar to the summer exam and previous years. Yet half of his paper is completely different to past papers.

The other half of the paper was a different lecturer and it was almost identical to the Summer Exam/previous 7 years of exams including last years supplemental exam (slight variation in questions, but still the same topics).

I think Ill just have to call my tutor or even speak to the other lecturer about the exam. To me it just doesnt seem fair to completely change the exam structure in a supplement and tell a student 2 weeks before hand, it will the same exam

Lawliet · 13-09-2015 11:44pm

I don't know if there's much that can be done. There was an issue with one of our exams a few years back, an entire essay question was set on something that was literally one diagram on 1 slide out of 400, it was completely out of line with anything that had been asked in previous years and even the head of the department agreed with us that it was unfair. But it was on the course and technically it was taught to us, so the lecturer hadn't done anything wrong by asking the question and we just had to suck it up.

The up side is, when something like this happens everyone generally does badly and you tend to get graded on a curve.

IWJ · 16-09-2015 6:59pm

Anyone know if lecturers mark the supplemental exams?

NormalBob Ubiquitypants · 16-09-2015 9:42pm

IWJ wrote: »

Anyone know if lecturers mark the supplemental exams?

which department?

IWJ · 17-09-2015 12:18am

Engineering, maths and science department

NormalBob Ubiquitypants · 17-09-2015 10:17am

if you had a tutor for the subject then i would say that person may be correcting. otherwise lecturer. if there are only a ouple then the lecturer may do it immediately to save time.

IWJ · 17-09-2015 4:36pm

Does 901- supplemental refer to those supplemental exams that are sit first time?

Can anyone confirm this?

dabh · 17-09-2015 7:41pm

IWJ wrote: »

Does 901- supplemental refer to those supplemental exams that are sit first time?

Can anyone confirm this?

Replying to this on the assumption that few who follow boards.ie would know the answer to this question.

Some modules are assessed on the basis of examination alone, at both annual and supplemental sessions.

For other modules, the annual result is based on a combination of examination and continuous assessment (derived from essays, term tests, homework assignments etc.)

To take an example at random, module EC1010 (Introduction to Economics) has components EC1010-1 (mid term test, MT, 15%), EC1010-2 (mid term test HT, 15%), EC1010-3 (annual examination, 70%). But those required to supplement in EC1010 sit a supplemental paper, EC1010-901, that supplies 100% of the supplemental mark.

The '901' convention has been introduced so that the Examinations Office and others can easily identify configurations such as that described above. Such modules are prevalent in BESS, Computer Science and Mathematics, for example.

Basically a '901' component contributing to a module mark is a supplemental examination that provides 100% of the supplemental mark in a module where the annual mark is a combination of several distinct components.

If a module is 'exam only', or if there are multiple supplemental component that correspond to the annual components, then the supplemental components will be numbered to correspond to the annual components.

Standard of Supplement exams

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