6. Reporting

The Education Desk is tasked with publishing grades via SIS: only then are they official. In practice, instructors often send the grades to SIS themselves, through Canvas. You can let students know their grades before this, using the Grades function in Canvas, but they are unofficial at this point, and no rights can be derived from them. Grades become official after the opportunity to view the exam/assignment has passed and the deadline for students to appeal has passed. Your programme’s Teaching and Examination Regulations (OER) stipulate when grades must be entered in SIS. This means your grading time is limited, and usually lies somewhere between 15 and 20 working days.  

The Education Desk is tasked with publishing grades via SIS: only then are they official. In practice, instructors often send the grades to SIS themselves, through Canvas. You can let students know their grades before this, using the Grades function in Canvas, but they are unofficial at this point.  

Yes, students have the right to view their exam/assignment. They may also view the answer key or assessment form/rubric. However, you don’t have to publish these.  

Providing the opportunity to view the exam/assignment is required, but you are free to decide how you want to facilitate this. You can also organize a group review session for all students, in which you discuss common errors, for instance.  

Examiners are not required to publish answer keys or assessment forms/rubrics. This also applies to the answers to multiple choice questions, sample answers for open-ended questions, essays and so on. Allowing students to view these during a review session is sufficient.   

A grade in itself is a kind of feedback, as it expresses the degree to which students have mastered the material. However, midterm exams/assignments offer the opportunity to provide students more detailed insight into their progress. You can give individual feedback or organize a review session where students can ask questions. One disadvantage of feedback is that it is primarily the instructor who’s hard at work (for instance, by providing many comments). Good feedback, however, puts the student to work. 

Detailed individual feedback on a final exam/assignment is usually not very effective. The course has ended, and students no longer have the opportunity to make changes, as they could after a midterm exam/assignment. If you do want to provide feedback on a final exam/assignment, a group review session could help. The University’s Teaching and Learning Centre offers an e-learning module on feedback.  

Yes, all courses must have a resit.

Each course has one resit per academic year. Additional opportunities are only possible in exceptional circumstances, partly because they can lead to procrastination. That’s why it’s good to stimulate students to take part in the regular course assessment, for instance with a bonus that they lose if they take part in the resit, or with partial grades that can compensate each other and which can’t be retaken in the resit.  

Just like the original assessment, the resit assesses the course learning outcomes, but it can be in a different format. If the original assessment consists of a midterm assignment and a final exam, for instance, the resit may consist of just one exam. Of course, students must be informed of this beforehand. 

Yes, some programmes choose to include a ‘barrier’ that restricts access to the resit, for instance by requiring students to score an average of 4.0 before the resit. This prevents students from putting all their eggs in one basket. Of course, students must be clearly informed of these rules beforehand, and it’s useful to consider what you will do with students who don’t meet these entry requirements due to bad luck or personal circumstances, as this can mean a lot of extra work for you. 

It differs per programme whether students who failed the course are automatically registered for the resit or whether they must register themselves. 

Resits are primarily meant for students who missed the first chance due to bad luck or circumstances beyond their control. They are not meant for students to try and score a higher grade. Your programme’s Teaching and Examination Regulations (OER) stipulate whether students can resit passing grades. If so, the last grade always counts.  

In principle, final grades stay valid, but this validity can be limited – for instance, if knowledge or skills are demonstrably out-of-date. Such restrictions can be found in your programme’s Teaching and Examination Regulations (OER). In some courses, the final grade is based on several smaller assessments whose grades are not recorded in SIS, but in Canvas. These partial grades are no longer valid if a student fails the course (i.e. if they redo the course in the next academic year, they start from scratch). It’s good to inform students of this beforehand.