Assessment Methods

Assessment, by a variety of means including practical projects, essays, and term work, is directed towards encouraging you to do your best and to relate the work produced to standards generally recognised in our discipline. Your degree classification (Distinction, Merit, Pass, Fail) is calculated on the basis of the marks you acquire for the whole of each module. For example, an essay or project delivered during the teaching period may be weighted at 40% for a mid-semester assessment and 60% for an end-of-semester essay, or you may have one essay worth 100% due at the semester’s end. In every case, the marks are put together to produce one final mark for the module.

The questions are set by individual tutors, except on team-taught modules where tutors contribute questions that the module convenor finalises; you may also be given the opportunity to devise your own questions. All assessments worth more than 40% are marked by more than one tutor. Your dissertation is a longer piece of work, with the topic and research questions set and defined by yourself, in consultation with members of staff and, finally, your dissertation supervisor. It is important to take as much advice as possible whilst you are developing your project.

The range of the School’s assessment methods is deliberately wide, so as to provide the conditions for high quality work. In assessment we aim to make judgements of your work as a whole, in individual modules and in your total profile of marks. We do our utmost to avoid mechanical judgments based on enumerative calculations. Except for breaches of submission dates, or excessive absence from class, there are no automatic penalties applied. Our marking is the result of discussion between examiners, and your final degree follows careful assessment of your whole performance over your career with us. All times and forms of assessment are announced in course documentation for individual modules.

When you are required to write an essay worth 100% of your module mark, unless otherwise indicated, it should be of 6000 words, excluding the footnotes and bibliography. Essays which make a percentage contribution to the final mark will be of different lengths (as a rule of thumb, each 30 credit module will require you to deliver around 6000 words of writing, but this may vary slightly between modules).

Essays must be typed in a plain and clearly legible text (e.g. Times New Roman, 12 pt) with double-spacing and margins of 2.5 cm or 1 inch. You should follow the conventions set out in the MHRA Style Guide. It is very important to keep to the deadlines: the ability to plan your work and submit it on time is all part of the skills-training package, and late submission will be penalised (see below). It is also important to present your work well – ensure spelling, grammar, punctuation are correct, and that you have followed the referencing conventions recommended in the MHRA Style Guide – or you run a serious risk of losing marks. If you are in any doubt about presentation, see your MA tutor. (S/he can look over an essay plan but not a whole essay or final draft.) Each essay is marked by two internal markers; the external examiner will see any essay on which a mark cannot be agreed, or as a sample within a particular class. If you need help with writing essays and your dissertation you could consult the following: Writing: A Concise Handbook by James A. W. Heffernan and John E. Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1997). You should also use the MHRA Style Guide for help with bibliographic details, format and layout. It is extremely important to get these matters right and essays can be marked down for failure to do so.

For detailed guidance on dissertations, please see the Dissertation page