Course and assessment setup

Assessment Guide
Support documents for designing, reviewing and redesigning assessments
 
The material below have been created by the Centre for Teaching and Learning to support departments, faculties and programme teams who are designing, reviewing and/or redesigning their assessment: 
 
 
Exam preparation

Departments should, in advance of the academic year in which exams are due to take place:

  • Establish standing orders – these set the terms for the composition of the nominating committee and the number of examiners that will serve on the exam board.
  • Check and circulate exam conventions – these set out how examined work will be marked and how the marks are used to arrive at a final classification. They should be checked at the first meeting of examiners. 
  • Complete the assessment review – a review of the assessments and assessment structures must be completed via eVision each summer.
  • Appoint examiners – This activity is administered via EAP portal. Information and guidance is available from the Examiner Appointments and Payments webpages
  • Confirm Exam Board meeting dates – must be submitted as early as possible to eVision each academic year and by no later than 1 November. For full guidance on how to submit the dates, please refer to the Exam Board Dates Quick Reference Guide available from the Student Systems webpage.

Colleges should:

  • Ensure candidates are entered for exams at the appropriate times and any necessary dispensations are applied for (eg students who wish to be examined under old syllabus)
  • Consider whether they have enough invigilators and book them onto training sessions.
Exam conventions

Exam conventions are the University’s formal record of the specific assessment standards for the course or courses to which they apply

They are a student-facing document and should be written in a clear and comprehensible manner. The same version of the exam conventions should be used by examiners, with more detailed local operational guidance appended if necessary.

At their first meeting, examiners should satisfy themselves that their exam conventions are comprehensive and unambiguous. They may suggest amendments and formalise interpretations: any such modifications must be approved by the supervisory body.

Exam conventions must be circulated to all students and also published, either as part of the course handbook or separately, in a place easily accessible to students at least one full term before the exam takes place. Where assessment takes place in the first term of the course, they should be published at the beginning of that term. Ideally, exam conventions should be publicly available so that prospective students may have access to them. If this is not possible, they should be accessible via Single Sign-On (SSO) to anyone in the University so that the Proctors and colleges have access to them.

An examination conventions template is available in the Examinations and assessments framework (EAF).

Responsibilities of the supervisory body and examiners in relation to exam conventions are outlined in the Examinations and assessments framework (EAF).

Assessment review
The assessment review is the first step in the annual cycle enabling the assessment structures to be configured in eVision which in turn supports students’ assessment entry, timetabling and submissions.
 

This process is a review of the assessments and assessment structures, for Taught courses. These structures are reviewed by Exam Board administrators each summer in preparation for the forthcoming academic year. The approved assessment structures are then presented to students to enable them to enter for their assessment choices (where the programme allows choice) using the online assessment entry functionality in Student Self Service.

eVision Assessment Review

Exam Board administrators are invited by the Academic Records Office (ARO) during the Long Vacation to update assessments and assessments structures in eVision to ensure that they meet the Examination Regulations for the coming year.

The functionality enables:

  • assessments to be added or removed;
  • assessment details to be reviewed/amended; and
  • section rules to be reviewed/amended (e.g. must do 4 out of 6 assessments available)

A manual containing guidance for completing the assessment review on eVision can be found on the Academic Records Office - Departments SharePoint site, under the 'Guidance & Resources' area (please note that access to this manual is restricted to authorised staff - if you believe you should have access, but do not, then please contact the ARO (aro@admin.ox.ac.uk). Please also note the 'Addendum to the Assessment Review Manual 2223' which includes important information about changes to the assessment review process for 2022/23.

Once the assessment changes have been submitted, the ARO will update the assessment structures in eVision in readiness for the assessment entry windows opening.

Deadlines

The dates for submitting the information for exam entry in the 2022/23 academic year are as follows:

Exam entry date

Deadline to submit review to ARO

Core only and MT entry dates 2 September 2022
HT and TT entry dates 18 November 2022


For Continuing Education programmes only:

Programme Type

Deadline to submit review to ARO

Core assessment only programmes

2 September 2022

Programmes with options

18 November 2022

Programmes with options

Please provide the module timetables as soon as they are available

Joint Schools

There are two suggested options for Joint Schools:

a) Each Joint Schools administrator can login and make amendments to their own part of the Joint School but these changes should not be submitted until all administrators have checked their assessments and structures. Therefore, administrators must liaise with each other and agree when and who will submit the final changes.

OR

b) One administrator is nominated to gather any changes/comments from the other administrators and will then be the only person to login and submit the changes on behalf of all.

Joint School administrators should inform the ARO of which option has been chosen for each Joint School and, if applicable, who the ‘lead’ administrator will be.

If you have any queries regarding the assessment review process, please contact the ARO on aro@admin.ox.ac.uk.