General principles

It is the policy of the School of Mathematical Sciences to treat all of its students in an open, humane and honest manner, respecting their dignity and rights. It is the purpose of this Code of Practice to remove uncertainty, ensure reasonable uniformity of practice between modules and reduce stress on students. The current Students Union Framework of Good Practice in Teaching and Learning approved by Academic Council is in agreement with this code of practice.

Information

At the start of each semester, lecturers will notify students of:

• the nature and timing of all continuous assessment
• an outline of course content
• any recommended texts
• contact details
• progression procedures
• office hours

Continuous Assessment

Continuous assessment is intended to help students by:

• encouraging them to work and rewarding them for learning throughout a module
• giving them feed-back
• relieving exam stress at the end of semesters
• developing skills other than those tested in the end of module exam

Continuous assessment is not seen as a further hurdle for the students to surmount. Hence, continuous assessment is not regarded as a separate component and modules may run with no repeat continuous assessment.

It is essential that the form, setting and marking of work for assessment is seen to be fair and equitable. When continuous assessment is utilized, all results pertaining to same shall be made available to the students in a timely fashion and certainly before the sitting of the final examination.

Chairpersons and other members of the School shall endeavour to ensure that no more than three major pieces of continuous assessment and/or class tests are timetabled in any one week.

Availability of lecturing staff

Lecturing staff will, within reasonable bounds, make themselves available to deal with student queries. In the first instance, this will be done during office hours (see above). The guiding principle will be that if a lecturer is not available to deal with a request from a student, the student should be able to ascertain a definite time when the lecturer is next available to deal with their query.