University for final year students, what happening this year?

[ssd]

Highers are cancelled for schools but what about final year exams for uni students?
Has anyone got a clue, am talking humanities in Glasgow.

DS2 (3rd year) only has one final exam this term. He's been told it will be a timed essay format. I'm presuming question paper given out and they have a short time to upload essays. There was talk of using some sort of tracking software to ensure no cheating but this doesn't seem to be going ahead. He is lucky because his course had a compulsory fieldtrip it is lighter on final exams this term with most modules examined via essays and others examined at the end of 4th year.

It was 4th Yr specifically I meant but thanks anyway.

Many honours courses, eg Humanities at Glasgow* are taken by 3rd and 4th years. Many are moving to a timed-essay format, either fairly short (a few hours) or longer (a few days). Others are substituting the exam with a normal essay.

*my best mate is a lecturer in Humanities in Glasgow - this is what she said. If you can narrow down the subject she might be able to provide more specifics.

Thanks

Yes there are plans in place for each subject, students should be told this week if they don’t know already.

Eg online open book exams at set time, tracking of IP addresses, answers checked for plagiarism

Eg online open book exams at set time, tracking of IP addresses, answers checked for plagiarism

Sorry am being thick, would you mind explaining what you mean by this?

Online exams will have to be completed in a certain time slot. DS2 already had class tests to do that were done like this. All written work is put through a programme that checks against other papers and articles, papers are given a plagerism score. They are allowed a certain amount as they might be quoting texts within their answer. IP addresses, students will have to register one device to use which will have a unique address. It means that they will know if the test has been completed by that machine.

Essentially they are just trying to much as much security in place to try to ensure that the tests are completed by the person they should.

Makes sense, thanks

We have been specifically told not to communicate or speculate on details with students until these have been confirmed by senior management. I do not know what my students are doing yet, all I know is that I will of course provide appropriate support and guidance.

Best advice at the moment is for your young person to complete any coursework and to start revising as usual, making sure that they can access what they need for this. Whatever they are asked to do will be based on learning which has been delivered, so working on that, expanding and deepening knowledge, practicing past paper essay questions, will all be helpful.

The content of the exams will be as similar as possible to “ normal “. It’s just the format might be slightly different to suit online. So they just need to revise the way that they usually do.

It’s actually quite difficult to cheat in many university finals. You’d basically have to find someone much better qualified and knowledgable than you to sit In the room with you and do your answers. The consequence of getting caught out are so serious for both parties that very very few people would be willing to risk it.

Most absolutely hopeless cases have got thrown out the course long before the finals. Most students who have got this far have a high chance of passing, so you’d be mad to potentially throw away the whole of the last four years for the hope that you might get a better grade by cheating.

Remember they have four years of a student’s course work and exams to compare . If a student has consistently been low Cs and Ds and they get A1 or A2 in the finals, it will be looked at very very carefully.

Here’s the common grading scale for reference

www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/teaching/common-grading-scale-2840.php