What is the marking process?

Marking of summative assessments is undertaken by the relevant Module Leader, sometimes with the assistance of other members of academic staff.

To ensure fairness in marking the University has a policy of anonymous marking which is applied to all exam scripts and the vast majority of coursework, although there may be exceptions to this where the format of the assessment means anonymisation is not possible (for instance, when assessing a presentation). The marker will therefore not see your name when marking and you should avoid including it anywhere in the work you submit.

The markers use marking criteria which are shared with you as part of the programme or module materials on Learn and which are designed to help you to understand what is expected of you in the assessment. These criteria then enable the markers to award marks in a consistent and transparent manner. The final agreed marks for your assessment will be recorded as a percentage whole number (i.e. ranging from zero to 100).

What happens if I submit my work late?

It is very important to submit your work before the assessment deadline and check that you have submitted the correct file. Please note that any reference to 'assessment deadline' on this page includes any agreed extension you may have.

If, however, you have missed the assessment deadline, it is still important that you submit your work as soon as possible. If you have not yet submitted any files, then you can usually make a late submission for up to 4 hours beyond the deadline via the original submission point.

If the submission point is no longer available, or if you have already submitted a file (e.g. partial work), you should email your work to your School Administration Team as soon as possible.

In accordance with Regulation VII, any assessed work which is submitted late will be subject to a penalty. Your work will be deemed late if it is submitted after the submission deadline. This applies even if it is late by just one second (so, for an 11am deadline, work submitted at one second past 11am would be considered late).

The penalty applied for late work depends upon the assessment category: assessments such as presentations, lab tests and all types of examinations are classed as Fixed-time Assessments meaning they have a fixed start- and end time, whereas assessments like essays, reports and projects are classed as Due Date Assessments meaning they have a set deadline by which the assessment must be submitted. In the case of Due Date Assessments, the penalty also depends on how long after the deadline the work was submitted. A full list of assessment types and details of the late penalties that apply are given under the assessment category headings below.

Late Due Date Assessments

Due Date Assessments are those which have a set deadline (time and date) by which the work must be submitted. A full list of assessment types which are categorised as Due Date Assessments is given below:

  • Artefact
  • Case study
  • Computer code
  • Creative work
  • Dissertation
  • Essay
  • Laboratory report
  • Mathematical problems
  • Peer assessment
  • Policy briefs
  • Portfolio
  • Poster
  • Project
  • Proposal
  • Report
  • Technical report

For Due Date Assessments, the following penalties for late submission apply:

Up to four hours late

If you submit a Due Date Assessment no more than four hours after the deadline (plus any agreed extension), your work will be accepted for marking but the raw mark will be reduced by 10% of the mark achieved. Your mark will be rounded to the nearest whole number (for example, a mark of 51% would become 46% and a mark of 66% would become 59%). Your assessment marks shown on Learn (or released by Module Leaders through other means) will be the raw marks before the penalty has been applied. This is important to ensure that your marks accord with the feedback you receive on your work. Your official marks, which will have the penalty applied, will be published at a later point through the University’s MyResults system (see the link below).

The above policy came into effect from the beginning of the 2023/24 academic year. This policy does not apply to any work relating to 2022/23 or earlier where previous policy applied (in 2022/23, this was to award a mark of zero for all late submissions, regardless of the assessment type and the degree of lateness).

More than four hours late

If you submit a Due Date Assessment more than four hours after the deadline (plus any agreed extension), a mark of zero will be awarded for your work. This is the mark that you will see on Learn.

Link to Results FAQs →

Late Fixed-time Assessments

Fixed-time Assessments are those which have a fixed start- and end-time, or the assessment takes place in a relatively short window (usually no more than 24 hours) which has a fixed start- and end-time. A full list of assessment types which are categorised as Fixed-time Assessments is given below:

  • In-Class test
  • Laboratory test
  • Learn quiz
  • In-person examination
  • Online long-window examination
  • Online short-window examination
  • Oral language assessment
  • Practical assessment
  • Presentation
  • Time-limited test
  • Tutorial participation
  • Viva voce

If you submit a Fixed-time Assessment after the deadline (plus any agreed extension), a mark of zero will be awarded for your work. This is the mark that you will see on Learn (with the exception of examinations where marks are only published at the end of each Semester through the University’s MyResults system).

What if I had a good reason for submitting my work late?

If you have submitted work late due to circumstances outside of your control, you should submit a mitigating circumstances claim by the deadlines published in the Student Handbook.

What happens if I submit an incorrect file?

When uploading your work, it is your responsibility to ensure that you submit the correct file, so we strongly encourage you to check this at the point of submission.

If, however, you do submit an incorrect file for an assessment, you should submit the correct file as soon as you realise. You should do this through the original submission method if it is still before the deadline (plus any agreed extension). However, if you experience any issues in doing this, you should email your work directly to your School Administration Team without delay.

If you need to submit the correct work after the deadline (plus any agreed extension), you should immediately email your work directly to your School Administration Team and, after doing this, follow up with a brief explanation about what went wrong in submitting the work originally. Coursework submitted before the submission deadline (plus any agreed extension) will take precedence over any work submitted late, even if you originally submitted an incorrect file. Schools can make exceptions to this for Due Date Assessments if they agree the original (on-time) work was submitted in error and the correct work is submitted within four hours of the submission deadline (plus any agreed extension). In these instances, the penalties covered under the above section on “what happens if I submit my work late?” apply.

What if I had a good reason for submitting an incorrect file?

If you submitted the wrong file(s) due to circumstances outside of your control and you were unable to re-submit the correct file(s) before the submission deadline, you should submit a mitigating circumstances claim by the deadlines published in the Student Handbook.