University complaints

[mk45]

My son recently completed a dissertation with a well known Midlands university but got a lower mark than expected. My son took his dissertation without any support or teaching from the course leader. The course leader has emailed my son to confirm he had no contact with my son. He said lockdown was hard for students and staff. This person was also his dissertation supervisor and he did not mark the draft dissertation so my son took the whole two module course without being taught. He had informed them he could not access course materials early on. He raised it three times throughout the course but staff did not follow their own complaints procedure and now the course is finished they want him to put it on a step 1 form. Is this usual for students trying to complete degrees and dissertations during lockdown? I know my son can complete the internal complaints procedure but has anyone experienced this process because his close friend, another student from the same university, recently committed suicide and it might be better to leave it rather than deal with a stressful complaints procedure that won't achieve much. Thanks

First of all, is it a complaint he wishes to make, or to appeal his result? These are different processes, with obviously different outcomes.

And no, it is not usual for students to have no support from the dissertation supervisor. I would avoid using the words "teaching" and "taught" though. Unless this is a different dissertation module to most, it is an independent piece of work, for which students can expect support and advice, but not teaching.

Thank you for responding. By teaching I meant the tutor led sessions. His tutor had no contact with him but knew he couldn't access resources. My son had asked him for help accessing resources but had to speak to the head of the department before he received just one course exemplification. This person was his supervisor and marked the dissertation. My understanding is it is difficult to appeal his results because it is academic judgement but I think that is the outcome he wants. I'm not sure a complaint would achieve this but it might help other students. My son's dissertation comments stated he would have done better if he was able to access the course. He fulfilled all the course requirements on his own but the mark was lower than he needed.

I am just trying to unpick your complaint.

Have I understood correctly that you are complaining about the following :

1. No support or teaching from course leader.
2. Draft dissertation was not marked.
3. Could not access materials - raised three times.

This year, students have had to be even more independent than usual. My son has accessed recorded lectures and completed all research and work without support, from home. So I suppose my questions would be :

1. Was he able to watch lectures? What support did he expect but not receive? Does he have records of, say, emails requesting meetings that were left unanswered?
2. Was everyone else's draft dissertation marked? Was his draft submitted in a timely way? Does he have records of emails asking why his draft was not marked?
3. What materials couldn't he access? Why couldn't he access them? Does he have records of the three times he raised this?

So I would be sympathetic to the university if he didn't log on to watch lectures, submitted his draft late or not in the correct format, was given the information to access resources but failed to follow those instructions.

Or if he got a disappointing mark and is retrospectively raising complaints about things that didn't really bother him at the time.

Or if the support he received was the same level that everyone else received.

But if he has been repeatedly asking for meetings, repeatedly saying that his draft hasn't been marked, repeatedly saying that he couldn't access the online library, then I would be sympathetic to him.

Your complaint, or the way you word it, is hard to understand what has actually happened and what he's actually complaining about. Because it sounds like he's complaining about a number of different things. Some not related. You need to be clearer in your explanation.

I think the best approach would be to respond specifically to resources that the university commit to making available. These should be laid out clearly in the dissertation handbook. Eg. How much contact time (often it’s around 6 x 30 sessions). Are you saying he could access these module guides, what other resources was he expecting that he couldn’t access? Does he have documentation to say he tried to approach his supervisor but requests for contact were rejected… or did he not approach the supervisor at all?
It must have been a difficult time and I can understand you’re both disappointed with his mark, but it’s very hard to establish from your post;

a) whether there has been a clear problem on the part of the university in terms of refusing support, not acknowledging requests for support or withholding resources (I’m not sure what he didn’t have access to as the point of dissertation is that it’s self led)
b) whether he needed to initiate more than he did (eg did he ask for meetings?)
c) a bit of both

It never looks good when the complaint is obviously being raised because the student got a lower mark than they wanted. It sounds like you are just stating a collection of information that may or may not be relevant in an attempt to ask for a remark or for your sons grade to be increased. Your son (not you) needs to establish what he is actually going to complain about and evidence the ways in which the difficulties he experienced directly led to him achieving a lower mark than he was capable of. He also needs to be able to demonstrate that he raised these issues at the time and we’re not dealt with adequately.

As a pp says he would be better off basing the complaint on one or two specific and easily demonstrable facts rather than citing lots of different reasons or issues which then makes it sound like he is just fishing for a higher mark

Start with what outcome you / he want.

The grade cannot be put up because it is graded on the content not the work put in so the fairest thing, from the uni's point of view is to allow him to resit this module(s) with no penalty.

If he is on the border between classifications this can be taken into account.

@fourminutestosavetheworld

I am just trying to unpick your complaint.

Have I understood correctly that you are complaining about the following :

1. No support or teaching from course leader.
2. Draft dissertation was not marked.
3. Could not access materials - raised three times.

This year, students have had to be even more independent than usual. My son has accessed recorded lectures and completed all research and work without support, from home. So I suppose my questions would be :

1. Was he able to watch lectures? What support did he expect but not receive? Does he have records of, say, emails requesting meetings that were left unanswered?
2. Was everyone else's draft dissertation marked? Was his draft submitted in a timely way? Does he have records of emails asking why his draft was not marked?
3. What materials couldn't he access? Why couldn't he access them? Does he have records of the three times he raised this?

I think this is exactly what I meant. Thank you.

1. He could not access the lectures. He was alone in term time accomodation during lockdown. The lectures were not recorded. He even booked library slots to try to access them. He has emails informing staff he could not access resources.
2. He didn't know he had a dissertation supervisor perhaps because he couldn't access the lectures. He couldn't meet with anyone on his course during lockdown. He submitted his draft and other students did get marked feedback.
3. The university have confirmed he raised this three times. The complaints department emailed him and told him to write it on a stage one form and to complain about teaching and resources rather than appealing the mark. The lecturer confirmed he had no contact with my son. They knew he had extenuating circumstances and his friend had committed suicide. I have seen the emails. They also knew he has a condition covered by the Equality Act because I had to email details before he started.

I'm a key worker and worked all through lockdown. We followed the government advice and he stayed where he was and I didn't realise how difficult it had been to access his course until a few weeks ago. He had mentioned it but like most busy parents I assumed it was my son who needed to work harder. I'm not sure if formalising a complaint will provide anything useful but the emails seem to show my son tried a number of times to get help with accessing the course and the lecturer didn't have any contact with him despite him asking.

Thank you for all the advice. It is all useful.

I’m a bit confused.

Normally a dissertation module doesn’t have that many lectures, as it’s an independent piece of research.

Did he submit a dissertation proposal? Normal practice is that he gets an email or it’s up on the VLE to say who his supervisor is?

Also what a commode toons were put in place for his condition? Normally these would be things like a scribe, or more time in exams, or a request to ignore spelling and grammatical errors if a student has dyslexia for example. They wouldn’t affect the mark.

Accommodations.

Autocorrect hates me.

I’m trying to understand more too, surely the lectures were online, why couldn’t he access them? Did he not have a laptop or internet?

Surely he had a dissertation handbook, this should be published with all module resources on an internal website (usually the same one as all other modules). Did he have one / read it? Tbh many of the lectures conclude “read the handbook”. The process should be documented clearly in there, mainly to avoid situations like this.

In terms of marking a draft dissertation, how did he know to who / how / when to submit to without the resources. Im really sorry but I’m still struggling to understand and would like to try to help

Me too @HoppingHamster.

I’m really confused.

If he didn’t get any lectures, or support, how did he know his dissertation was on an appropriate topic?

We do lectures on how to research and how to reference and how to construct and present a dissertation. The students have to do a proposal which we mark and give suggestions on, and they have to do three presentations on where they are with their research.

But there aren’t lectures on dissertations really as they’re independent research.

Also, unless it has affected his final degree classification, it really makes very little difference once he’s out of academia.

Having come through the complaints system of a University I can only say the university decides if the university has acted fairly. Not hard to guess what the outcome is. Your son will overcome this as did mine.

OP, you need to be a bit clearer.

Are you saying that there weren't any lectures for the module because of lockdown, or are you saying that there were lectures which your ds was unable to access? And if he couldn't access them, but others could, why not?

How was his dissertation supervisor allocated, and how did he not realise that he had one? Did he have no access to a VLE with information about the module? No handbook etc? If he submitted a draft for marking, did he do this in a timely way? How did he know what the deadlines were if he didn't have access to any information about the module?

It sounds like your ds has had a really rough year, what with covid, lockdown and his friend's suicide. I wonder if this has maybe caused him to drop some balls a bit? Was he offered support when his friend died?

I'm really sorry but none of this makes sense.

"2) He didn't know he had a dissertation supervisor - perhaps because he couldn't access the lectures. "

No. He should know who his dissertation supervisor is. He should submit and proposal and have a set number of meetings to discuss, give advice and review progress. This can all be online by email. Covid wouldn't affect this.

Did he submit his proposal?
A draft? Did he get advice on how to improve his draft?

"He couldn't meet with anyone on his course during lockdown. He submitted his draft and other students did get marked feedback. "

Did he? He must have. If he didn't get any feedback I would have emailed every single tutor I had, the head of dept, the area head, the complaints dept everything.

He submitted a draft, got advice and then submitted his final version.

Is he honestly claiming he didn't know he had a dissertation supervisor. That's ridiculous. Of course he knew.

I'm sorry but this all sounds very weak.

Either you or your son are not telling the full truth. How would he know where to submit his dissertation too or by what date if he'd been given no info? He hadn't spoken to a single soul on his course about it, had he not made friends in the previous years to at least text?

This is so wishy washy that I highly doubt you're going to get anywhere with the university. Does it have a massive impact on his overall grade? If not, I'd move on. The best you can hope for is an opportunity to resit, I would think.

What were the resources that he was unable to access?

I used to work in University complaints, so I'd like to help if I can.

He may well have had lectures regarding the dissertation. Usually there are a few to explain how to write a dissertation, talk about common mistakes, etc etc. As PP have said though, they presumably were online. Did he not have internet access? Could he not access the lectures for his other modules? If so, has he missed the entire year of teaching? Because that's really not good and something should've been done about that long ago. I'm surprised he wasn't flagged as having not attended lectures all year.

I also find it surprising that he didn’t know he had a dissertation supervisor. Presumably his course has a programme leader that students email with queries. He didn’t ask them who his supervisor was?

I'm struggling to understand the circumstances here. And it will be difficult for the university to help if they can't understand what's happened.

What I don't understand is how he knew when and to whom to submit his draft if he didn't know he had a dissertation supervisor or who that was.

And why he didn't follow up on the fact that he had no feedback on his first draft and push for that before completing his final draft.

Why was he unable to access lectures?

How didn’t he have friends? He’s final year if he’s doing a dissertation so how come he didn’t have mates on his course from the last 2 years (or 3) that he could chat to about the dissertation?

“ What I don't understand is how he knew when and to whom to submit his draft if he didn't know he had a dissertation supervisor or who that was.”

Perhaps that information was in a document that he could access. I did a dissertation year before last and the guidance was saved in a few different places. It’s not impossible.