Appealing the grade given for degree help!!

[Pippa000]

Ok I shall try and explain best I can with what dd has told me.
She was given her results for her degree today, she got a 2:2. It was 2 marks off a 2:1. She is very upset and frustrated at the same time, as the breakdown of her result were what she feared, the group module (made up large % of final mark) work was the let down, scored 43 . She said the rest of her modules and dissatation were in the 60's.
Her frustration lies with the group work which she knew from start that the group she was put in would hinder her marks as they consisted of 4 overseas students who's English wasn't up scratch, she does a politics course, dd was the only uk student in her group. There was only so much DD could do to try and correct things plus the guys in her group had lazy work ethics it was hard for her to get them in a group to work together on the project.
At the time she complained about this problem several times to her tutor, it fell on deaf ears he wouldn't at all budge on scoring the work on individual merits rather than as a group.
Now that her results are out she is in bits that she has worked so hard, scored consistently well on all the other modules and the group one has scuppered her results and not reflective of her work. She feels shes wasted 3 years of her life because of been put in a crap group. She rung the univesity up, they said theres nothing she can do as she has passed and it has already been classified.
I didn't go to uni so haven't a clue. Does she have any grounds of appealing, I feel for her as it does seem unfair, since she has been to see her tutor several times about the project to raise her concerns. Any advice welcomed
Thanks you, for reading this so far if you have managed to do so.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

What's the assessor being from a non Russell group got to do with it? You sound a bit snobby!

[BikeRunSki]

Since your daughter's degree has been awarded, rather than resitting the year, why does she not spend the time and money doing an Master's degree? In my field, this would upgrade her degree be a classification.

[FatherReboolaConundrum]

Ski, most (in my experience all) MA programmes won't take someone with a 2.2.

[Pippa000]

Sorry for taking so long to get back. Have had to have a very long chat with DD, she is still in bits and having a mini meltdown. becca thank you ever so much for your pm I have copied and pasted for her to see. She needs all the support she can get as she feels so lost and helpless at what has happened. DH is collecting her tonight.
It is definatley the case that one group module achieving a 43 has effected her overall grade after accounting all her other modules which have achieved 60-70 in her final year. I have asked her zillions times as I like many of you guys wondered how the stats and laws of averages panned out rather odd for DD for her to get a 2:2 but this is was has happened, she doesn't have any other module apart from that one module that she did in year2 that was a 58. Every other module has been above that, 1 module she got 70 for. Shes checked and trebble checked. The group module marks she said contributed to a large part of her final grade. DD was very frustrated with her group, the English was dire, she couldn't re do the whole project as it was too much she could only re jig as much as she can, as she couldn't understand what some of the groups arguments were the english was so poor and the evidence they used to support was lacking, she asked the group to discuss with her and provide better sources of evidence so she could try and change it but they ignored her pleas so was left to her to decipher what she can. Hence she says you could clearly see her work and strange bolt on bits where she couldn't fix the other students works. The whole project wasnt flowing properly it was in her words very amateurish. She doesn't think the people in her group understood just how important this project was and so was very lazy to want to do group discussions and not put much effort in it either.
DD has made an appointment to see SU thank you for the person who suggested that. She knows now she can't resit or redo this year which is all the more frustrating for her as she can't at the moment see how to make things better. She really regrets taking this course now, she says had she had known group work was going to make up a huge chunk of her degree classification she wouldn't have taken it in the first place.
Sorry to the person who asked which uni DD is studying. I think I better not say. Im just hoping that something can be sorted out, DD has worked her guts out over the last few years. Let down by her group has cost her dearly.

[RandomFriend]

the guys in her group had lazy work ethics it was hard for her to get them in a group to work together on the project.

If she is to appeal, the appeal should be centered on this rather than on the written English of non-native speakers.

[FatherReboolaConundrum]

Hi OP, good to hear she's getting help from the SU. Do tell her to make sure that she shows them any emails where she raised her concerns about the way the project was turning out. If she flagged it and it wasn't dealt with and she has the email trail to prove it then she may have an appeal-able case.

Good luck!

[IdaClair]

I got a 2.1 and my lowest grade was a 72. My highest was 98. 10% more on my last exam would have done it. Ah well. Congratulations to your daughter on her degree.

[butterfly133]

thanks for the update
I wouldn't retake - presume she wants to get work now? - and I wouldn't do a further course. If she doesn't actually want to do one, it's another, what, £10k, when she could easily encounter the same problem.

Is that 43 counted as a fail? It sounds as though it might be. I went to a place where a fail in one module brought you down a class in your degree (that was my first degree).

I think she can make a very strong case that that wasn't her usual standard of work and that it was dragged down by the obvious factor here.

If it helps, do show her my remarks as well. I really feel for her. Hopefully the SU can do something. With hindsight I wish I'd tried harder to get it changed, but I had suffered a bereavement just before results and put it in the "too hard" box as I was changing careers anyway.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I hope she gets some support from the SU.

Please tell her a 2.2 isn't awful.

But, unless there has been an actual error in the marking (which doesn't sound likely if she's already asked about it), I don't see how it can be that she's been let down by the ground.

I can see it must have been very stressful coping with people with bad attitudes, especially if she was struggling to understand them. But I would be 99% sure there is more to it than that, that she's not getting. She should have known what the weighting on this project was before she started. So there clearly are things she hadn't understood either. I am not saying this to make you or her feel bad - it's just I can see how this could become something where she blames everyone else and feels cheated, and that will eat away at her.

Can she try emailing someone other than her tutor (and her tutor again) and asking them to explain the marking criteria to her? It might be something will come to light then, that helps make sense of this - because it would be much better for her to know than to be guessing about it being poor English or lacking evidence.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Ida, the OP's DD sounds to be working in a system where (like a lot of UK universities) things aren't marked up to 100 (eg. with us, you can't give a mark over 85 or below 20, unless it's 0). You must have been in a system marking out of 100 to get a 98. It's not comparable.

[Sisterjacqueline]

"dd was the only uk student in her group'

. I am a non-UK student fwiw and graduated with a first both under- and postgrad; not quite sure why mention this detail in your OP.

[Pippa000]

Sorry if I've offended anyone about my choice of words regarding 'overseas students' I just couldn't find any other words to convey what I meant without making it sound as though I was having go at overseas student. Which I am not there are a lot of hardworking overseas students who pay a lot of money to study here and have strong work ethics. My DD was just unfortunate to have all of them in her group that didn't have good verbal or written English. At dd uni, uk students have to achieve atleast a gcse C grade in english. But im not sure if her uni has the same standards for overseas, so this might be why dd may have encountered discrepencies. I don't really know. My comments aren't reflective of all overseas so please don't take offence.
Thanks everyone for all the kind words, support and understanding, she says she has 4 emails to which she sent to lecturer with concerns of her group. About 30 messages Facebook, twitter, what app where she is trying to gather the group together and messages replied back from them where they are despondent or making excuses.
butterfly I didn't get round to asking if 43 was a fail will ask her tonight.
jeanne I agree with what your saying, DD said she knew after 2 weeks with the people she was working with things weren't going to get done properly, she just couldnt get them all in one area the library, so many excuses, which was when she sent in her first email voicing her concerns to the lecturer. Shes found out tonight that 2 of her group members has failed the course maybe out of laziness lack of effort, I don't know but DD wasn't at all surprised. Your right she needs to know why that project achieved a poor score. She just wished she was put with a better group that were atleas team player's and all tried their damn hardest.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

The requirement for overseas students is higher than the equivalent of a C at GCSE, I think.

I hope she can find out what happened - she just needs that peace of mind, surely. I am a bit 'hmm' about the lecturer based on what you've said, actually.

[butterfly133]

OP, the fact that two them failed is all the more reason it should be reviewed. 2 of my group failed as well, as I said in an earlier post. This was years ago so I'm very sad to hear this nonsense still goes on. The degree awarded should reflect the standard achieved by the individual.

[namechangeforissue]

Are you sure all her other modules have such high final marks including the exams? Or is she going on her coursework marks? You can request your exam marks at our university but it involves a sit down with an individual member of staff, it's not automatic, so she may be assuming all her exam marks are as high as her coursework marks which isn't always the case.

FWIW I use group work but as a small proportion of the coursework mark which is itself a smaller proportion than the exam. We take students' reports of other students' attendance and participation seriously but some students tend to say "I don't want to get them in trouble but..." which is hard to deal with.

Overseas students have to get the equivalent of GCSE English, though the name of the test is different. I find the main problem with overseas students' English is only talking to their mates from their home country and not socialising with good English speakers. So they should be improving their English being here but may to improve as much as they could.

[catlovingdoctor]

She should talk to her tutor, course director, dean of faculty and academic affairs officer in the union and bombard them relentlessly. I know all too well the effects of incompetent colleagues in group work at uni- it is infuriating. You and her have my sympathy.

[Pippa000]

DD course is weighted 30% year 2 and 70% year 3. She mentioned earlier that the group module was worth 30 credits, whilst the others were worth 15 credits does this make anymore sense?? Plus she said the group project involved a presentation in which her group did a pretty crappy job too, since her members, some hadn't a clue what to say as they didn't turn up to the group meetings about the presentation I'm trying to get more info out of DD via text whilst DH is taking her home now. She said she asked the tutor politely via email and chats if he could credit her work individually and not as a group as she was concerned she was pretty much a one man band. But tutor said no, its called group work not individual work.

[Want2bSupermum]

JeanneDeMontbaston I am one of the least snobby people out there. When my tutor told me what happened I was shocked and very upset because I couldn't understand why my work should be graded more harshly compared to another institution when the degree classification required by employers was not dependent on where you graduated from. To go from a first to a 2:2 was grossly unfair IMO and didn't account for the work I put into the group work we had to do. I also had lots of foreign students in my group and while some were brilliant english speakers I was in a group of 12 with 5 whose written English was a disgrace. We rewrote their papers so they made sense. Was it fair that those guys got 2:2s when they should have gotten a 3rd or a pass?!!

The OPs DDs situation is pretty much exactly the same as mine. I can't help but wonder if she is at the same university I was at.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

So ... why was it relevant the assessor was at a 'non Russell Group'?

If it's not relevant, you needn't have mentioned it. If it is relevant, and you're implying that it matters, then sorry but that is snobby. It's implying that neither this person nor your institutional had the professional competence that you, a student, had to judge your work.

All universities use external examiners. It's normal. Everyone else across the country is in the same boat.

[butterfly133]

Pippa, for a group module to be worth 2 individual units makes me rage even more!

[Becca19962014]

It would appear the module was instead of a dissertation for the final year then from what you have said here and where i worked that happened in several departments as students preferred that to a dissertation (no idea why!!).

I've sent you another pm OP. It got rather long. Sorry if it's confusing

[Pippa000]

pippa the more details she is giving me the more im feeling a bit angry now. DD text says the group presentation wasn't to the specifications. DD met her specifications the others in the group didn't but because it was group work and major error, they all got the same grade.

[Lweji]

I'm surprised that the presentation wasn't marked separately. It should have been, because that's what distinguishes students that have been working in groups. Unless they were in a team building course, marks should always be individual where possible.

This is a bit old, but it may help: www.theguardian.com/education/2008/jun/23/highereducation.uk And:
www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/action/how-to-appeal-a-university-grade


Having said the above, your DD should be able to calculate her final grade from all her grades and respective weights.

[Lweji]

I was in a group of 12

WTAF? 12??? It looks like (some) universities go the least common denominator these days...