Low dissertation grade disappointment

[isittimetogotobed]

I am wondering if anyone has any experience?
My dissertation went off sick just before submission but was happy with my work and had a lot of input into what I included.
My newly appointed tutor read over my final copy and gave me positive feedback, said she enjoyed reading it and gave me some tips for 'extra marks' but over all was happy.
Yesterday o got my grade back and it is exceptionally low with a mark of 45.
I am absolutely shocked and devastated. Some of the comments are inaccurate, asking why I haven't included dates ( that are clearly there) and asking who someone is when in the previous paragraph I have introduced the author and explained his role.
There are comments questioning why I have included information that was suggested by my first tutor and praised but my new tutor just before submission?
There are also the last 17 pages that have no comments at all, not even a tick to show they have been read?

Do I have grounds for an appeal for it to be remarked?

There is no name attached to say who first marked it but it states it has been moderated but my new tutor.

Surely it is her role to ensure the comments are fair ( how can they be if she though to was ok?)
If anyone has any advice I would be very grateful, I was on target for a 2:1 and this has pulled my mark down massively

You can accidentally not be given a whole exam booklet but it would be hard to accidentally miss out 17 pages of a dissertation. And even harder for two markers to do this.

The marker may have stopped annotating because they were just repeating very similar comments as before and it would be better dealt with in general feedback.

Also, you've got a job to go to. Not having done so well on your dissertation doesn't sound like it'll affect that so don't worry too much about it. It may not affect your overall mark as much as you're imagining either.

In a few years time no one will care what your degree classification was. You'll have professional experience and it won't matter as much as it feels like it does now. And it's still an achievement to have finished the degree whether it's an upped or lower second class degree.

From what I can work out this will bring me down to a 59.3 overall. Feels very disappointing it miss out on 2:1 by so little bit I guess there has to be a cut off somewhere?

I have one final grade due on fri so if by a miracle I get a fantastic mark for that, I might just scrap in

If it's a 59.3 they'll probably round it up anyway.

Have you checked the grade boundaries/criteria? Not all courses work out the final classification by a simple average, they sometimes have several different ways to achieve the same classification. For example, it might be that one of the ways is 'x marks above 63 plus a total of y = 2:1' Or there might be provision for a compensating mark if one paper is significantly below the others (not normally for a dissertation, I'm afraid, but you never know).

I think the change of dissertation supervisor mid-way through may give you an opening to at least ask for a review, as it wouldn't be usual procedure to switch partway and may have put you at a disadvantage, especially if the supervisors have slightly different fields of expertise. In the circumstances it obviously couldnt be helped due to their illness, but it may mean you have grounds to request a review based on standard procedures not being followed. Discuss with your student union as you say, as they can advise specifically for your institution, but be prepared to show full copies of your original submitted drafts and written feedback to prove you did address all the areas your original supervisor and second supervisor suggested.
IME the usual reason for poor dissertations is either submitting an incomplete draft for feedback or not following all the advice given in the feedback.
It is upsetting when you feel you've done your best and put heart and soul into it, but ultimately if you have a job already that doesn't depend on your degree classification it will probably make little difference- 6 months down the line the employer (and future ones) will likely be more interested in how competent you are at work.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to reply. I do appreciative it greatly.

My university would have asked someone with a 59.3 average or on a classification boundary, to present themselves for a Viva. This happened to three people that I knew. They were asked what they wanted to talk about - two of them had something they were passionate about, talked about that, and it lifted their classification. The third one didn't have much to say, so the classification remained the same.

Virtually nobody does vivas for marginal cases these days.

It would be very time consuming, with many more students at university.

Such a procedure is subject to biases.

Most universities decide about the borderline cases via algorithm.

Mine does it in the first instance by always rounding up. 59.05 is a 60 once it's been through our system. There is an algorithm (in fact, it does two different calculations and then chooses the best outcome from the student's point of view) but even before it gets to that point, the administrator entering the marks rounds everything up.

And, we never viva any undergrads. In fact, in the decade that I've been sitting on exam boards I've only ever come across one situation where a viva was involved (and that was in highly unusual circumstances at another institution).

Have experience of this.

I'm going to be brief:

1. Find out what the procedure is for complaints /appeals at uni. THERE IS OFTEN A TIME LIMIT TO APPEAL.. So do this first!

As someone has said academic judgement you can't usually question. Often you can complain/appeal if there have been mistakes/ material irregularities. Sometimes you an lodge an initial complaint within the time limit so you don't lose the possibility of this,allowing time to study for your next assessment without getting bogged down.

Often student unions will know how these work well. I would not let this go through without questioning it.
There is also appeal to an external adjudicator (assuming your uni signs up to it) Office of Independent Adjudicator in higher education (OIAHE). Universities don't like when cases are found against them

2.Concentrate on getting the best possible mark in your next assessment.

It is quite possible that your next mark may bring you up to the 2;1, and also depending on specific uni rules people that are so close are often brought up into higher banding...

You've had some very good advice. I would echo what other academics have said: in the context of the range of marks that you've received, a 45% is not out of order.

Students often do less well on their undergraduate dissertations because it's the first time they've done really independent work from the start. The point of a dissertation is that you develop the topic entirely independently, and this is a big challenge - I tell my students that this is the biggest challenge of writing a dissertation - getting the topic right.

It may be that the encouragement your tutor was giving you was in the context of the level of achievement you were demonstrating. When working one to one with a student, it can be a fine balance between being very blunt about what is not working about a topic, a draft, and so on, so that the student can fix it; and being encouraging, because one makes a judgement that the student does not have the skill or talent to redraft or amend the work, the approach, the writing style (or whatever) particularly in the time given.

And it's unlikely that your marker just didn't read the last few pages. I've just marked a stack of UG dissertations, with very few annotations - we know from experience of repeated errors over 3 years in essays how little students take note of the corrections unfortunately.

Find out the marking procedures in your Department - again, the advice upthread about the process of marking is very sound. Gather your evidence, but don't go in aggressively over the head of the staff actually teaching in the dissertation module (as some pp have recommended here). It rarely does any good, as you really can't question expert academic judgement.

Academic staff are human too, you need to understand that, and there will be differences in evaluation & judgement. That's why we moderate each other's marking, so we can be sure of similar approaches and standards across a cohort. But all dissertations are different, both from each other, AND different from previous work you've submitted.