Marking Lottery

“Marking Lottery”

Written on: 21/09/2012

The continuing complaint I am hearing from many OU students is how ridiculously inconsistent the marking system is. You can get absolutely brilliant grades for all of the course work but then apply the same standard of work in an exam and get ridiculously low marks with no explanation as to why.

In my case I did a couple of level two modules, in my first module I averaged 85% for my tmas (tutor marked assignments) and ended up with a pass two, which equates to a B. Yet on another level two module I managed to average 95% on my tmas but ended up with a pass four with only one mark away from a fail, now bearing in mind the exam question was split over three questions its highly unlikely that I could do that badly over all three in the exam but so brilliantly in the course work.

I asked for a regrade but the examination board gave me a slap in the face out right no and said we are confident that procedure has been followed.

They say that exams are a different kettle of fish but after talking to lots of OU tutors and other universities the only real difference is being able to memorise content of the course. In the exam I explained what the concepts were about, applied them to specific examples and then critically analysed the concepts models and theories in the context of my chosen examples. I even checked to see if my knowledge of the material was correct to my course text book afterwards and it was.

All I can say is if you want to learn but are not worried about your grade then study at the OU but if you want to get good grades and be sure that if you apply what you have learned throughout your module in your exams will get you good grades then go to a different uni, because I think that because the OU is so underfunded the examination board do not have adequate resources to mark exam papers thoroughly so your final mark will be a lottery