Oxford SU - Fair Outcomes: What we're doing 20th January 2021
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Oxford SU – Fair Outcomes: What we’re doing 20 th January 2021
A quick recap
Current picture: What's already in place • Rent waivers for Hilary term: Following extensive lobbying by your elected sabbatical officers the decision has been taken to suspend all residency requirements for Hilary term. As a result, an increasing majority of colleges have decided not to charge rent for students who aren't returning. • Students with specific needs can return to Oxford: We successfully ensured that the list of criteria for individual students who can return to Oxford still stands – for example those requiring additional support, or those without access to study space at home. The full list can be found on the Christmas vacation page. We're working to ensure this is applied consistently across colleges.
Current picture: What's already in place • Libraries opened online and in Oxford: Libraries will prioritise remote and zero-contact digital services, although a small number of ‘hub’ libraries will be open for bookable study spaces. • Online resource access secured: The Bodleian is restoring access to the Hathi Trust service which gives access to an additional 1.6m in- copyright eBooks and a total of 4m public domain items. • Find out about the University’s COVID hardship fund, which you can apply for if your finances have been affected due to the ongoing pandemic here. • cross colleges. •
Tuition Fees: What's going on? • It's our belief that education should be free. • In the current situation the government should intervene. •Institutions are facing significant financial challenges due to covid-19 and will struggle to foot the bill without government support. •This is an unprecedented problem at an unprecedented scale and a national sector- wide solution is needed to ensure that students are treated fairly and that institutions have the support they need to deal with the situation at hand. •We are joining with students across the country to demand that the UK government offer affected students’ debt-relief, financial compensation, or the ability to redo a proportion of their studies at no additional cost. This worked in Summer 2020: NUS: The Student Safety Net campaign forced the government to make £66m available for hardship in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and got Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Office for Students (OfS) and the government to concede that students not receiving adequate education were eligible for refunds and to redo the academic year.
What we are doing
What's the plan?
• Individual level
• Mitigating Circumstances Notices to Examines (MCEs)
• What are MCEs? A student can register an issue that has affected
them e.g. bereavement/accident/field trip or resource issue and this
is taken into account by examiners.
• MCEs typically affect a student's final classification as opposed to
their final marks
• Cohort level
• Put in place measures at the cohort level to ensure students are judged
fairly as a cohort and compared with previous years.
• There are some university wide initiatives and some course specific
strategies we will be discussing on the next slides.Our 'Safety net' asks
What is a ‘safety net’?
A safety net can be defined in lots of different ways and was deployed in many
different ways at the University of Oxford last year.
One way that a ‘safety net’ can be defined is as a ‘no-detriment’ policy where
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students couldn’t get a lower to add
grade text
than their banked work pre-pandemic. This
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isn’t possible because we haven't
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to add text work pre-pandemic in most cases.
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We've only got prelims (which are unfair and a bad predictor of finals) and
collections (which are unregulated and uneven across colleges).
Our understanding of 'safety net', like what Oxford implemented for finalists last
year, is a system of policies put in place to mitigate the detrimental effects of the
pandemic on students with exams and coursework this year.Our University ask on exams
Get the University to commit to on all courses:
Rescale and/or re-weight: Exams and coursework
We're calling on departments:
• To engage with their students to produce solutions that are fair for
their cohort
• To engage in this process transparently
• To put policy in place to ensure that cohorts' outcomes will not be
negatively affected by the pandemic
• cross colleges.
•
Click to add textRescaling and Reweighting
What do we mean by this?
• Rescaling is a process by which exam paper or coursework
outcomes are adjusted to ensure that if exam paper or coursework
result averages are lower than in pre-pandemic years, the results
of a cohort are adjusted so the mean is equivalent to that of a pre-
pandemic year, or a mean of three pre-pandemic years etc.
• Reweighting is a process by which departments adjust the
weighting they give to different formal assessments a student may
take during their course, like placing more value in a dissertation or
• cross
a final exam in determining a student's final degree outcome
colleges.
depending on what makes sense for that course. Student should
•
be given the best result out of reweighted/normal.Our asks to the University
• Individual level:
• Mitigating circumstances:
• Self-certify Allow for students to self-certify for mitigating circumstances and
remove the burden of proof from students. Students should not have to prove that
living through a pandemic has affected them and their studies (streamlined and
self-directed)
• Marks not just Classifications: Ensure the MCE process impacts actual marks
and degree classifications by default
• Support for Students:
• Financial support: Expand the Uni's COVID-19 Scholarship Extension Fund and
COVID-19 Hardship Fund.
• Mental health: Ensure students can access the support they need and reduce
waiting lists. (look out for our mental health asks coming soon!)
• Academic: Boost support by offering more regular catch ups with tutors and
providing sessions on issues such as task management and dissertation writing.What are we asking the
University to do for students
with exams?
• Prelims: Cancel preliminary examinations for 1st year undergraduates
and replace them with college-based collections, which allow all students
to proceed to 2nd year.
• Future Years: Ensure mitigating circumstances policies implemented
this year remain in place for students who matriculated by MT20.
• Extensions: Allow departments to give deadline extensions
for coursework, where possible and beneficial for students.
• Communicate and co-develop: Ask that departments make changes
transparently and in partnership with students.
•What are we calling for on the
University level? - Research
• Extend continuation fees grace period for Postgraduate
students for at least Trinity and Michaelmas 2021.
• Blanket funded extensions
• Join the national calls for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
to offer blanket funded extensions
• Match those for non-UKRI funded research
• cross colleges.
•What you can do
Course level
1. Get our resources available at oxfordsu.org and understand what changes
you can call for at the course level.
2. Organise your course and agree a clear set of asks for your department.
3. Appoint leaders (we’d suggest your course rep/JCC rep) to liaise with
Oxford SU. Our policy team will check your asks and empower you to
work with your department/faculty to get the best deal for your cohort.
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4. If you’re a course rep/JCCClick
rep/student leading your course’s asks register
to add text
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on the SU website and we’ll be in touch.Where can YOU make a difference? • Join and sign up to our campaign at www.oxfordsu.org • Over 300 students and 3 student newspapers back our campaign. • This University-wide lobbying works well, however... • Every course, college and division at Oxford is different and crucially make a lot of their own decisions on how to run • Sometimes, one-size-fits-all policies don’t work. The ideal outcome for your course might be impossible on another. • The student voice is crucial and we are most powerful when we’re united. • In the next section we will give you the tools to campaign at a local level- and tell you how we can help.
What could you ask for? Assignments: 1. Postpone assignment deadlines 2. Fewer or less harsh penalties for missing assignment deadlines Exams 3. Postpone exams 4. Alternative assessment in place of exams 5. Fewer exams e.g. drop one exam from the normal schedule 6. Longer time to complete each exam 7. Easier prelim resit process Mitigating Circumstances: 8. Widen reasons sufficient for mitigating circumstances to be accepted 9. Remove need for evidence in mitigating circumstances procedure 10. Make mitigating circumstances process faster and easier
What could you ask for? General: 11. Reweighting of assignments/exams towards degree classification 12. Focus on mark adjustments (not just classification adjustments) 13. Earlier communication about upcoming deadlines and exams 14. Guarantee of in-person assessment if government rules allow at the time 15. Guarantee of online assessment regardless of government rules 16. College parity 17. Course parity No disadvantage: 18. No disadvantage (ensure that each student's degree classification is no lower than their pre-pandemic achievement, if your course has banked assessments pre-pandemic other than prelims) 19. Rescale: Adjust exam outcomes to ensure that if exam result averages are lower than in pre-pandemic years, the results of a cohort are adjusted so the mean is equivalent to that of a pre-pandemic year, or a mean of three pre- pandemic years (one of our Uni level asks -> join our campaign at oxfordsu.org
What won't work?
•The challenges:
•Linear courses: No net – Prelims bad predictor of Finals/unfair, Collections
not equal.
•Using prelims results would just reinforce the disadvantage for those most
likely to be disadvantaged by the pandemic. See this
investigation: https://cherwell.org/2020/10/16/investigation-prelims-favour-
private-school-students/
•The degree of heterogeneity in collection marking is too large to be of any use
at all in classification.Support for you
• Policy: Our policy team can read through your course level asks to check you're
asking for the best possible deal: alice.churm@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk
• Sabbs: We're happy to help or give feedback on emails to heads of department
or supporting/checking over your course level asks. Vpaccaff@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk
• Comms: Our comms team can give you advice and support if you are
contacted/covered by any local or national press - we're here for you! Contact
commsmanager@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk
• Advice: As always, you can get individual info, support and guidance
from Oxford SU’s free, independent and impartial advice service here.
• RepComs are termly meetings for Reps from every common room- the full
schedule will be sent to Reps and Presidents this week – make sure your Reps
attend to support each other, hear from the sabbs, and find out how campaigns
are progressing in other colleges. Any questions –
studentengagement@oxfordsu.ox.ac.ukThis combined approach
is our plan to get the
best deal for students.
• Timeline: 4th/5th week Hilary – expecting communications from the
University
• Ongoing meetings: Education Strategy Group, Education
Committee, Taught Degrees Panel, Divisional Boards.
• We're working hard on this, we'll work to get the best deal.FAQs
• Is fair outcomes for students for postgraduate taught (PGT) students?
Yes, students need support, especially for 1 year courses. Our asks apply to
all students with exams and assessment. Our VP Graduates sits on all the
education groups to ensure graduate voices are amplified.
• Why can we get the same policies put in place for last year (Summer
2020)'s exams and assessment? Some of the policies we're asking for are
the same (e.g. self-certify mitigating cert, appropriate reweighting). Some
can't be done because students don't have pre-pandemic banked work (e.g.
dissertation done pre-covid) and we can't use prelims/collections. That's
why our call for reweighting + rescaling asks along with everything else will
secure the best deal
• Why should we trust and support the SU campaign? Experience: we
played a pivotal role in securing the deals for Summer 2020
assessment, Role: we're in the main education groups- we can
ensure issues are raised and actioned. Policy: Dedicated policy team for
support plus national networks (e.g. NUS).Updates from Sabbatical Officers
Questions
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