Any social science academics around?

[Piggywaspushed]

Hi all, and sorry to barge into your space but ,for a range of reasons, I didn't want to put this in HE.

I'd like to understand exactly how bad an undergrad essay needs to be to outright fail, without having plagiarised or failed to comply with word limits. There is, of course, a story attached to this. I have read through quite a few threads and am 100% confident that none of you is at my DS's uni/his tutor.

I'm not agitating for evidence for an appeal ; I am just a bit confounded by a whole process and wanted some expert input. My DF is a retired lecturer and I have his thoughts but he is in marketing and hasn't marked undergrad work for about 10 years now.

If you can lend me your ears and thoughts please let me know! I obviously won't add lots of chapter and verse wastefully unless someone responds.

The fact this thread exists at all suggests that your son and everyone around him has responded to the feedback in an over the top way.

What you really need to know is that he has to accept the judgement of the academics who are making this work. He cannot appeal because he doesn’t agree with them. He can only appeal if the processes haven’t been followed properly.

It sounds like someone has screwed up the turnitin/VLE settings for marks visibility. That’s unlikely to be something he can appeal on. He can raise it as a problem that’s increased his anxiety so that they can ensure this gets sorted out in future.

My advice would be to tel him to wait for the final mark to be released and then talk to his tutor about his options.

Learning to respond well to feedback is a really important skill for working life. If his manager at work tells him that he’s not performing as expected and then again that he’s not responding to the feedback he’s been given, it’s going to be a problem. So, rather than trying to find reasons why this academic must be wrong about the essay failing, it would probably be best if you concentrated on supporting him to understand feedback and respond productively to it. And to ask for clarification where he needs it.

I'd put it all down as a learning experience for DS if it weren't for the potential failure of the whole degree.

Unfortunately, there’s really nothing you can do at this point, and you are coming across as a bit of a helicopter parent.

This is a final year student. It sounds as though, despite VERY specific formative feedback and individual tutor help, he still didn’t understand how to do independent research and writing.

The programme leader will discuss what options are available to him once the marks are agreed.

This kind of stuff takes up so much time from a large number of staff. No one is looking to fail a final year student unless their work really isn’t up to the minimal required standard. It’s in absolutely no one’s interests.

Even if this lecturer did have some personal vendetta against your son (and he won’t), there would be no benefit to him to failing the student at resit and having that affect his ability to pass the degree. That’s a whole load of effort that he’s just not going to go through when he could just give it a 40 and no more thought. Then never see the student again.

Oh come on….parents basically fund their kids’ education. She’s just trying to understand the process. It’s a big deal if your kid fails their degree. I imagine OP is just trying to think of all options.

OP your son needs to talk to his tutor about options to retake the year. Good luck.

And I would add, re the plan - in days of old before students and parents and government policy instrumentalists every single thing we ask students to do, a plan would have been submitted and given formative feedback, but not summative feedback. There would not have been a mark.

But now, because students just won’t do work for which there isn’t a pay-off (a mark which “counts”) we have to give grades for things like plains.

And because we know that most people learn better through praise, constructive feedback, and encouragement, we rarely say exactly what we think (“This is a mess and if you go about your essay this way, you’ll fail”). So students can sometimes take away from this feedback a bit of an unreasonable understanding of the quality of their work. It’s absolutely normal for formative work (an essay plan, an abstract, an annotated bibliography) to be marked a bit higher for its potential. A really excellent student will realise that potential; a weaker student will not.

It sounds as though your DS had a lot of help and still didn’t demonstrate the level of conceptual understanding required. 3 references or 5 (still a very weak bibliography for a final year student) is not the issue here. It’s the quality of thinking: conceptualising the topic, constructing a clear and evidenced argument, writing with clarity and strength.

parents basically fund their kids’ education.

no, they don’t- or at least no more than all UK taxpayers. And all UK students’ undergrad degrees are largely subsidised by academics (and some other university professional staff) who work something like the equivalent of an extra 6 weeks a year more than they’re paid, and overseas students whose tuition fees reflect the real cost of the degree.

I mean they support their child through university. I wasn’t talking about the wider structural funding of HEIs.

I think you are being a bit harsh on my DS luft : although some of what you say hits the mark, some is wide of it . It's not his fault that people have had to start asking for plans: that's a systemic thing. This is the only module he has done where there has been a seminar mark and plan, as it goes. Thank God, as it turns out.

In the resit , no feedback is given on the plan as it got set as a resit so both things got submitted at the same time and marked.

The marking process is very rigorous, which is clearly a good thing. I thought it would just be , yes you have now passed.

There’s also a big difference between 3 relevant sources used accurately. And 3 references thrown in that do not actually make the points the students claim they do.

Referencing isn’t just about making sure you include the page numbers and italicise them journal title in your reference list. It’s actually about the process of engaging with the existing evidence and debates in a meaningful way.

Merely putting 3 actual academic sources in a reference list doesn’t necessarily make the essay better. Even citing them may not. It can actually make things worse. Claiming that Smith (1997) argued that giraffes are short when Smith argued exactly the opposite is terrible referencing. As is quoting a bit of it taken so out of context as to misrepresent the content (which students do often do).

But, if you aren’t very familiar with the literature you won’t know that the referencing is showing either misunderstanding or lazy misrepresentation of the debates the student is supposed to be showing they understand.

I started this thread as a person trying to understand how common fails were.

I am not trying to encourage any action at all against this lecturer.

My reaction is not over the top. He's my child, even at 21, and he is panicking.

I'm not one of those interfering entitled parents I'm sure you all encounter. Honest.

I do disagree that he has had 'lots of help'. There are many different characters and types in academia as in all walks of life and this man is at the not terrifically helpful and approachable end of affairs. I gave told DS it us ridiculous to externalism and blame others and it us only for him to sort out issues. He then got his head properly down and worked hard.

I think it's fair that he isn't a very conceptual person.

Yeah, thus is kind if how I imagined it would go!

For example, it’s not that unusual to find students who write things like ‘Thaler states that people are rational economic actors and that “cash is the best possible gift; it allows the recipient to buy whatever is optimal’ (2016: 6). If you don’t know anything about the behavioural economics literature, that might look fine. But it’s absolutely not. Thaler’s book is a critique of that kind of thinking and a proposal for a different kind of economics that accounts for how human’s actually behave.

it might be a relevant source in an essay on gift giving, but it’s terrible referencing. Even down to the almost classic misrepresentative quotation.

All this describes exactly what I have done. Appeals have never been mentioned!

He definitely did respond to feedback. And he asked for some further clarification so tgat he coukd improve, as you suggest. Others have intimated that he shouldn't have done that.

Look, @Piggywaspushed i don’t know the university, the course, the module, or your DS. I’m just responding from over 30 years of teaching undergrads. Feedback is a gift. And tutors are human. As is your DS.

You seem to want other random, anonymous academics to give you evidence (ammunition?) for this mark to be in some way the tutor’s error, not your DS’s. You’ve had several academics (who also sound very experienced) give you their responses to the information you’ve supplied, plus insights into our thinking about assessment.

Most academics take assessment very seriously. I know I can agonise about an essay, a mark, a paragraph of narrative feedback - even after doing this job for more than 3 decades. We put ourselves into assessment although we do this professionally; it’s really not personal. No lecturer has the emotional energy to have deeply held personal opinions about students. And even if we did, the process of 2nd marking, check marking, calibration, and External Examining mean that any perceived “favouritism” or “animosity” is ironed out. That’s the more likely explanation of the adjusted marks your DS saw.

From the information you e given us, there are no grounds for appeal. Your DS is best to wait for the Exam Board results to be published. It’s quite possible that if the mark for this module is the only mark that jeopardises him graduating, it will be looked at. If your DS’s university follows best practice, this will be on the basis of anonymised records - we work by student ID number only. No space for his tutor “disliking” (if this is even a thing).

Yup, can definitely see that!

The thing is, the students who do it very often really cannot see it. They don’t understand the debates enough (or the purpose of referencing, despite 3 years of people trying to teach them) to recognise that it’s a big problem.

Someone not familiar with the field won’t be able to quickly judge what’s going on there. It looks like it should be ok but it’s not.

It’s not that the students are trying to cheat or anything sinister. It really is that they haven’t learned some of the core material and can’t demonstrate the learning outcomes as a result. Sometimes, they’ve really tried but (for whatever reason) this module is stuff they just don’t get at all.

Does he use the grading sheet? I forget what it's called now - the information they supply that gives what he needs to do for each level of grade? If he goes along with that, keeps to the question and doesn't get distracted from it, references correctly and uses good, peer-reviewed data and references then he shouldn't fail.

The rubric

There wasn't one of those....

There was a 5 point criteria thing (can't remember what it was called) and , yes, he did check against that.

It does seem odd that having got 2.2s for all other subjects overall that he suddenly can't write an okay essay this one time.

And that it will fail the whole degree.

Double check the student handbook, most allow one condoned failure whereby as long as the average including this is over 40% it is allowed.

We have no desire at all to appeal! I ave said that several times...

Genuinely not looking for ammunition. Maybe validation, mea culpa.

The large (to me) gap in marks (which he definitely should NOT have seen) was what stared my thought processes . It may be totally normal for HE academics to differ that much in opinion.

Its not relevant to my question - but , come on, of course people have personal feelings and subjectivities - students towards lecturers, too. That's a reason why moderation and external processes exist, as you say. The NSS does ask about feedback and marking criteria and I have noticed those marks are often quite low (I know it's a rubbish survey in lots of ways!) so I do think often students feel that marking criteria aren't very clear, sometimes not fairly applied and that feedback can be less than helpful. They may all be wrong. Giving feedback is as hard as receiving it.

Ironically, he actually quite liked the module!

Have checked burnout. No fails allowed in years 2 or 3. That's why he had to resit. However, the resits may have condoned failures so that they don't fail whole degrees. Thanks- will look.

When you say “the 2000 word limit, including bibliography, was quite hard for him to keep to”, are you sure that the word count included the bibliography? I’ve never marked an essay where the bibliography is included as that would make the essay itself really short surely?

Bibs never count in word limits as they duplicate the references.

This one definitely did. 2500 words, including bibliography and references.