Unusual High failure rate

kaoder

Hi

Im a student in DCU, im in my final year and im seeking advice in relation to pass/failure rate of course modules. Last year a particular lecturer in the department failed a high percent of the class on an assignment. These students were adversely effected as the repeat of the assignment could not be submitted until the following December and they were awaiting results until February. An Autumn Progression Board was not made available for the students who had to repeat. This consequently meant that they could not attain their degree qualification until January 2011, which meant they were unable to work in their field of practice until then.

This year the same predicament occured within the department regarding a high failure rate on a particular module with the same lecturer.

Can anyone please advise me on the procedure and guidelines to follow when requesting a recheck of the scripts? What are the rights for students when evidence of a review from a second corrector are not evident on the script? Who should I approach in relation to these queries within the university, will the students union advocate my cause? Anyone have advice in regard to appealing on the grounds of unfair results due to over-correction of the paper for instance too many marks allocated to grammar, punctuation and presentation over the actual content and understanding of the assignment?

If anyone who has experienced a similar situation, advice would be greatly appreciated.

cocoa

Places to go for help :

Students Union (either the Education and Welfare officer or your faculty convenor, contact details are all online on the Union Website)
Student Advice Centre (located on ground floor of Henry Grattan, opposite the canteen)
the module coordinator
your personal tutor
your year head
your programme chair
your head of school

Policies to be aware of
Student Complaint Procedure
Appealing Exams

Hope that helps, as you can see there are a large number of points of support there to help you understand the policies etc so I'd encourage you to use them.

RubyRoss

Good luck with whatever your doing but I don't understand what you're saying.

Are you complaining that one lecturer is unfairly failing people or that failing is a disadvantage becuase the qualification is delayed (which I would expect it to be)?

kaoder

RubyRoss wrote: »

Good luck with whatever your doing but I don't understand what you're saying.

Are you complaining that one lecturer is unfairly failing people or that failing is a disadvantage becuase the qualification is delayed (which I would expect it to be)?

Both really, one lecturer is failing almost half of the class. This particular lecturer does not seem to use the Departmental marking descriptors and instead uses her own marking scheme which seems to attribute alot of marks for basic errors such as 'The Use of Capital Letters for the Title' (to which I thought and still do, think is correct) rather than the content and arguement within the essay.
As I said in the first post there was a similar incident that involved the same lecturer last year, half of the class failed the assignment, they got a deferral and re-submitted the assignment in December and have only received their results in February 2011, my point is that they should have been allowed re-submit the assignment and have their results in the same academic year.

kaoder

Thanks Cocoa for your reply I am sure to use that information especially on the policies