Online university exam - advice needed

[tv2021]

I have not been to university and don't completely understand the system and need some advice for my daughter.

She is finishing the 3rd and last year of a STEM degree with a language in one of the best universities in the country.

She had 4 online exams this year. She received her results in mid July and they were much lower than she expected. 3 STEM exams were very hard, she prepared a lot and thought she did well.

I advised her to appeal. She send an email but was told appeals were not possible.
She was very upset for a while and then decided to question her language result as in all her assessments through 3 years she had results 70+ and her final grade was 62%. She sent an email and over week later got a reply that they hadn't received her video with oral exam. She was sure she had sent it. Then they said that she could send it again. Another week later she got an email saying that they found her video submitted on the exam day and will check it and reconsider the grade. That was over a week ago, nothing still happened. She was very upset but at least hoping that it will be sorted.

She also questioned the result of a STEM module that she failed and needed to retake. She asked to see her exam paper because she needs to know what she got wrong to prepare for retake. And she got a reply that they never received her exam answers. She was very shocked to hear that as she is always very careful with uploading and it was not her first exam. The module's result was based on her course work that's why it was so low. If she hadn't questioned it she wouldn't have found out.
She spoke to a teaching and learning administrator today and she said that they received her exam questions paper instead of her answer sheets. My daughter couldn't believe it. She said she had her file with exam date and also photos of her answers on her phone with dates. She can prove she did the exam on the day. She is very distressed by it. The administrator said that she couldn't help and could only ask someone else to talk to my daughter.

My daughter found studying STEM modules online really hard. Online exams were much harder than previous years, only 3 hour long. She feels completely unsupported by university, very upset by how she is treated. She cannot start looking for a job as she still has not got her degree.

Can someone advise what she can do? Who she could talk to?
It is obviously technical problems either her end or university end that would not have happened if she had sat normal exam.
She is worried that nobody will help her and despite studying hard and in the hard subject she will have low result.

Also it takes a few days or over a week to get an email reply. If she wants to speak to someone it needs to be booked and it is over computer. Not possible to speak to someone in person. She finds it impersonal, like nobody cares.

First of all there isn’t much to be done about the speaking to people over email or computer. That will just be the new university process as so many staff are still working from home and can’t take phone calls.

If they’ve said they’ll reconsider her language grade now they’ve found the video, that’s great news and will improve her score, but a week isn’t a long time to get that sorted so don’t panic - especially at this point of year when universities are so busy with results day. She should reply to their email confirming they’ll look at it and ask for a timeline.

With regard to the STEM exam, if she’s uploaded the wrong file the university may well just consider that her error and she’ll have to retake. It’s rubbish but chalk it up to a learning experience and crack on prepping for the resit. The administration may be able to get her exam paper considered but no guarantee. Again, she needs to email and ask for next steps and a timeline.

There should also be some sort of safety net policy for students affected by Covid, has she looked into it? Some of it may apply to her.

Above all else though 62% average is a fantastic grade, once she’s able to sort the failed modules, even if she graduates with this grade she’ll have a wealth of opportunities available to her

This all sounds horrendous - I’m not surprised your daughter is distressed.

Who is the person the administrator is asking to speak to her? Presumably your daughter has either a personal tutor or access to a pastoral care / welfare department? Has she been in touch with them? I imagine all the teaching staff are completely uncontactable at the moment?

Online exams are the devil. She can’t be the only person this has happened to - whether the fault was with her or not. I’m afraid I don’t have any specific advice, other than to find staff with more authority than the administrator to speak to.

She needs to look at the complaints procedure, which should be in the student regulations (they may have different parts such as undergraduate regulations, general regulations) which should be on the University website/portal, and make a complaint about the administrative aspects of the exam handling, and that it has affected her materially, etc. This will prompt an investigation/review of the processes followed and look at any reparation that might be appropriate. In your daughter's case, I think I would want them to check that all aspects submitted were marked as some have already been found to have been overlooked. She might want to ask for compensation as well as it being put right as it is affecting her ability to look for graduate work. She should also look at whether they have any covid-related undertaking that no one will suffer detriment due to changes in assessment (that's the safety net policy mentioned by previous poster). It is possible that the complaints procedure will have an informal procedure before invoking formal - might be through the School/Dept or through central registry.

The denial of an appeal was presumably because she appeared to be appealing the academic judgement of mark (ie you can't appeal a mark just because you think you deserved better, there has to be a reason like you extenuating circumstances that you were unable to declare at the time). She's not asking for that now, she's asking to check they included everything she believes she has submitted.

As caller above says, it's a busy time for student admin, and will take longer than a week to sort. Even once marked it will need to go through an exam board to be finalised, but she should be able to expect some correspondence before then to let her know how it's going, which is where following the complaints procedure may help as they are obliged to assist.

Sorry to hear about your daughter's uni issues.

I took online exams last year....

Did your daughter not receive any 'receipts' for submissions made for her exams? It seems disorganised for the uni not to have this in place as students could claim they submitted x, y and z yet the uni could claim otherwise.

Did your daughter check the file she uploaded? For one of my modules a classmate had technical issues with a file she uploaded (then viewed and saw it wasn't correct) and left it too late to re-upload.

Has anyone else on her course had issues?

I do empathise due to the 'unusual' study year and lack of support from uni staff wfh. Although a few days/week for a response seems like a far better response time for my uni who took 3 months to respond to one of my emails.

Thank you very much for all replies

Yes, she received "receipt" of submission but it doesn't show what file she submitted.
She is adamant that she submitted the correct file as there is a "preview" and she always checked what she submitted.
They are saying she submitted the wrong file. She cannot disprove them.
She looked into complaints. It said "try to solve the problem informally first". This is what she is doing. But after speaking to administrator she got frustrated that they wouldn't sort it out.

Her university decided not to do "no detriment" policy this year.

She might always want to engage an education law solicitor if there really was a major error going on here - although in ability to prove what was submitted sounds like a big issue of proof for her.

The students union at her university would be a good place to start. They should be able to advise your daughter on how to appeal or request that her electronic submissions are double checked to see what she actually submitted.

Does the submission receipt mention the size of the submitted file, or anything else that might identify the file in some way?

Couple of things here

• They found the video with original submission on and they should now add that to her grade.

Not having a No Detriment policy is appalling, especially for STEM (just finish Microbio myself). It has been bloody painful finishing Y2 and doing most of Y3 online.

Hit send too soon.

She needs to contact her SU, they will know the policies and procedures inside out and will be able to guide her/advocate for her.

@tv2021 Interested to know if your daughter has got anywhere with a review/appeal/complaint? Hoping she did as it sounded unfair.