Marking

Marking standards and tips about plagiarism.

Marking standards 

• Students are understandably very sensitive to variation in strictness of marking between tutors.  (This is true even when, as is often the case, the marks for a given hand-in contribute only a very small amount to their final grade.) Talk to other tutors and try to keep your mark levels consistent with the rest of the tutors. 
• First and foremost, follow any marking instructions you are given by those setting the work.   
• In a poor piece of work, try and find at least some things that you can give credit for.  
• Use the full range of marks: if about half of it is correct (or would have been correct but for an earlier error) you should give about half the marks.   
• Don't feel you have to take marks off for everything: for instance, if a calculation is worth just 2 marks and a minor numerical slip is made at the end, you should probably give 2/2 not 1/2. 
• To encourage students to think about a problem even if they can't see how to do it, we usually encourage them to write something about the problem even if it does not answer the question asked. 

Overall, have some regard for the psychology of what you are doing. Have high standards, so that students only get 100% if the work is done and presented really well. But at the same time think carefully about very low marks. If the marking scheme allows you the flexibility, you might decide with a poor effort that you imagine the student has worked hard at to give it 5 out of 10 rather than 3 or 4: the student will still realise it is not so good, but a really low mark may just be demoralising. 

Plagiarism

In dealing with work that seems to be excessively similar to another student's, please bear in mind that for good pedagogical reasons we actively encourage collaboration on hand-in work. Point out to the students involved that after collaborating they should write down their own version of the hand-in and that identical work from students is not acceptable. Mention also that it is in their interests to get feedback on their work and not on somebody else's. Explain this to students where necessary and if it continues, refer the matter to the Course Organiser. You might also add that in most courses we insist that students pass the exam in order to pass the course and so a couple of marks on assessed hand-ins is very unlikely to be the difference between passing and failing.