–––Grade Marking: Briefing for students

What is grade marking?

Southampton Solent University is introducing a new system of marking your assignments called grade marking. This means that for most of your assessments, you’ll get a grade (e.g. B2) rather than a number (e.g. 65) when your work is returned to you. The exception is assessment where you can either be right or wrong, such as some multiple choice tests, where you will still be given a mark.

Why is grade marking being introduced?

Although marks are currently given on a scale of 0-100, research has shown that most tutors only mark between 35-75%, and that actually, marks are only reliable to 2-3%. Therefore having fewer marking points, spread more widely, will mean that marking will be fairer, and that your best and worst marks will be better represented in your final degree mark.

Grades also match exactly with the Generic Grading Criteria that you use in your assessments. If you get a B2 in one assignment, you can use the grading criteria to show you what you need to improve on to get a B1 or an A4 in your next assignment.

Overall, we think, and research has shown, that grade marking is better for both staff and students.

What do I have to do?

You don’t have to do anything. All your assessments from now on will be returned to you with a grade, apart from exams and some assignments that have clear right or wrong answers which will still be in numbers.

Staff in the faculty offices will change the grade to a number, (for recording your assessment result in the Student Records System), and the table below / overleaf shows which grade is linked to which numerical equivalent.

You’ll get the results of your units back as a number, and your final degree award will be calculated from numbers, in exactly the same way as now.

FAQs

How do the grades for each element get combined to give a unit mark? Each grade corresponds to a numerical equivalent. The numerical equivalent for each assessed element will be given its due weighting and combined (as at present) to give an overall mark for the unit.

Will marks for those assessments which require the full numerical scale i.e. those where answers are either right or wrong, be converted to a grade, and then to its numerical equivalent? No, these will be recorded as the true mark achieved.

How do marks from grade marking and the full numerical scale get combined? The numbers from both scales (with due weighting for each element) are added together to produce an overall mark for the unit.

Where do I get further information?

You can find out more about Grade Marking from the Portal and on myCourse http://mycourse.solent.ac.uk/grademarking

You can ask your lecturers, the Student Support Network Officers in your Faculty, and you can send any questions on Grade Marking to grade.marking@solent.ac.uk

|Class |Grade point on scale |Solent Grade |Numerical equivalent |
|First |Excellent 1st |A1 |100 |
|Non-submission |Non-submission |N |0 |

Southampton Solent Grade Marking Scale