We decided to make grading into a recurring topic in our Newsletter, to keep everyone up to speed with regards to the way grading is handled in our programme.

Regulations
It is a good thing that our University has drawn up a number of regulations about grading. That way, lecturers know exactly how much time they can dedicate to giving feedback, while students know exactly when they can expect their results. Well … not exactly. We noticed that many students have no idea about the relevant regulations. And to be honest, one has to know where to look and even then, the regulations can be hard to find on the website.  Lecturers are more up to speed when it comes to awareness about grading periods, but even for them the following can be interesting.

OER
The OER, the Course and Exam Regulations, of the Faculty of Humanities contains a number of regulations regarding assessment in Article 4.6. For the grading (in the OER marking) period, this comes down to the following:
- Exams should be graded and processed in the system within 15 working days of the day on which the examination took place (please note that there may be one day between the processing of the grade and the publication of the grade, this due to the way uSis works).
- If the examiner is unable to comply with the period of 15 working days, the student is notified through Blackboard and email. The notification contains the latest date by which the student will be informed of the result.
-There should be at least 5 working days between notifying the student of the result and the date of the resit.

To give you an example of how these deadlines work: The midterm exam for Global History was on 21 October 2019. This means that the grades should have been processed at the latest on 11 November 2019. The grades were actually processed on 28 October, so working 10 days before the deadline. We do not always manage to grade all exams within the deadlines, but in those cases we do inform our students and there is always 5 working days between a final exam grade being published and the resit.

Thesis grading period
For the thesis, there are different rules, as there is even more feedback involved in thesis grading. The regulations can be found in the Regulations and procedures concerning the bachelor’s thesis.
The basic rules are:
- A thesis is graded within four weeks.
- During the summer, between 1 June and 1 August, the term is extended to a maximum of six weeks.

National Student Survey (NSE)
The potential discontent resulting from the clash of viewpoints, with students asking for faster results and lecturers needing time to formulate and provide feedback, results in a relatively low grade on the National Student Survey for International Studies concerning assessments. Now, in a programme like International Studies, lecturers often have to grade over a hundred exams, mostly for more than one course. On top of this, they need to grade a high number of final essays in this same period as well. All in all, it is likely that our lecturers mostly need the full period of time they are officially granted to grade exams and essays. This will happen more often than in other BA programmes, with smaller numbers of students.  Still, at International Studies, by far most grades are published on time and when the grading period is extended, students are generally informed. I say “most” and “generally”, as there are always cases in which we do not manage to do this, however seldom that may be. Most importantly, there is always enough time between the publishing of the results and the Resit. And when there is not enough time, we reschedule the resit.

Programme Manager – Dr. Jaap Kamphuis