APPEAL/SECOND REVIEW FOR ACCA OBU

@trephena said: There are no grounds for appeal against academic judgement alone. If you can show the assessment criteria were not applied appropriately then that can be cited as grounds for an appeal.

Can you please talk some more about the distinction between assessment criteria not being applied vs academic judgement. This seems like a very fine line.

The system is fixed -apart from in very clear cut situations e.g. they say your spreadsheet did not contain formulae and it did. Anything else they will say is your opinion and you are querying academic judgment. In P38 one of my students was failed for referencing -the criteria were (but have subsequently been changed) - referencing is mostly absent. So we counted the number of instances where this was the case (i assess MBA dissertations so I have the right background to do this) and we came up with the FACTS that referencing was at least 71% present -so how could it by definition be mostly absent?? They still ignored the mathematical principle that a greater number by definition must be more than a smaller number and said we were querying academic judgment! They use 'academic judgment' as a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card and it is just an excuse most of the time and cover for BAD marking

@trephena@gillianm Good Evening. I have received my feedback yesterday which is down below I passed my research report (Grade B) but I failed one of the components in SLS. Self reflection Pass Communication skills Fail You state that you sent the Powerpoint slides to your mentor by e-mail, then answered questions on-line. It is a requirement to make an oral presentation of your slides. This could be done on-line using Skype, Zoom or FaceTime. The SLS should then contain your reflections on what you learned about delivering a presentation, not just about creating one If I have passed SLS reflection area which is how adequately i have answered all questions, then how can I amend my SLS and they didn't mention any problems in Power Point presentation. Furthermore,  I have mentioned in SLS about zoom meetings and how i presented my findings to my mentor from the presentation.  Secondly, will this affect any current passes I received for other aspects of my RAP if I go for an appeal or the academic review will focus on the areas that I received a fail ?? Kindly do advise on how to approach this matter as i do not know which aspect (SlS or presentation) to be amended and if an appeal is necessary. Thanks in Advance.

They have failed my RR on my failure of communication skills (presentation). I do not understand.

@sufiya - First off congratulations on getting a B for your report, which I am pleased to inform you will be retained. So whatever degree classification you would have got if you have managed to full the SLS /Presentation criteria at the same time, will subsequently be awarded to you. With your Presentation this comes down to did you or did you not present to your mentor via Zoom / Skype etc? It is a requirement stipulated in both the info for students and mentors. Obviously I can't say how other mentors fulfil the Presentation requirement but with my own students I get them to send the slides ahead of the Presentation via email for review. At that point I may suggest a few basic improvements [e.g. ensure the graphs are all labelled or maybe telling them to make the bullet points more concise or point out obvious spelling /grammatical mistakes]. The student then reworks and resends them, and we set a time and date for the actual Presentation. This is via Zoom or whatever but I have the slides loaded on a separate device so that I can see them appropriately on a full screen while maintaining eye contact with the student. The important thing is my students verbally present. So if you followed a similar procedure with your mentor the best way to resolve this is to get the mentor to write a statement to this effect and appeal. Obviously if you didn't go through the procedure I outlined above then you and your mentor did not fulfil the University requirements for the Presentation [see pages 40-41 and 44 of the Information Pack]. These now need to be complied with in order that the requirements have been achieved.

@ gillianm @trephena Thank you for replying but I am still not able to understand where I should make the necessary changes . My doubt is the feedback is for self reflection which I passed and not for the communication skills including ppt. I referred the appendix for reasons for failing comm. skills and it seems the feedback will be for areas related ppt ( such as less no. Of slides etc.) My feedback seems to be for self reflection and that area is a pass for me so I dont have to submit my SLS. Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks in Advance

@gillianm Kindly reply for my above query as I am still confused. Thank you.

You have failed the Presentation and NOT the self-reflection as the feedback shows: Self reflection Pass Communication skills Fail Please refer to my previous post - you either need to appeal or rectify the situation if there was no online video presentation to the mentor [Please be patient - I have my own students who are preparing their P41 submissions!}

can anybody tell me whether RR can be failed due to failed communication skills or is it SLS? So, my hardwork is nothing, my analysis is nothing but that my slides are the deciding factor that makes me qualified for a failed project?

Any appeal will only be successful if there are definitely grounds for the appeal in the first place. In other words unfortunately you cannot appeal just because you disagree with the result. You must show that the marker was factually wrong e.g. they said that you had not included ratio analysis on profitability and you did. There is no charge fir an appeal but most fail because they are not factually based but rely on opinion e.g. the marker has said the evaluation lacks depth but you think it does. This comes down to 'academic opinion' and is not permissible for an appeal. All submissions will count as an attempt so if this was your third and final attempt or the 10 years has expired then this would be the last submission -only in very rare circumstances will it be extended -there is no mechanism to extend this regardless of any appeal.

Hi Gilliam. My report was referred to ACO for the period 40. However, I have not heard anything from the officer till date. Please advise whether I can follow up with them.

Yes, you should follow this up as you should have been told what the key issues are by now. Send an email requesting them by return.

Hi Gillian, My repot was was also referred to ACO and since then it's been more than 2 months but i have heard nothing from them. Does this mean that ACO have no querry to made in regards to my RAP and there are chances of positive outcome?

I haven't received any comment from ACO yet, does that mean there is no querry to be made and i can expect positive outcome?

Hi guys, I received the results and I failed my OBU because of my Presentation slides. The marker’s feedback is as follows: ” Communication skills – Fail The presentation does not summarise the findings, analysis and conclusions of the research report. The financial analysis must provide some explanation of the trends (analysis) and commentary on the benchmarking undertaken. You have merely stated the figures, Please provide analysis and benchmarking for all ratios included. Your conclusions also need attention as currently they do not provide the reasoning or commentary on the drivers behind the exceptional performance.” In a way the feedback is true as my presentation only stated figures for the ratio analysis but that was because if i started explaining the details behind my presentation, the slides would be very heavy and contain a lot of figures making it longer than 15 slides. I am asking if there is a way I can ask for an Academic Appeal as it is the only criteria I failed and if you can suggest possible arguments I can make i would appreciate it. I sent an email to [email protected] asking for the procedure but i have not received any answer yet. Kindly if anyone can help out I’d appreciate it my email – [email protected]

Kindly advise me related the process of appeal

Can you guide me how did you appeal, my result is distressful for me and Now I want to appeal.

Hi, i want to file appeal for the reviewing. I have received the feed back " I have even discussed the matter with my mentor. He encouraged me to do so. I have sent the email but the response was not satisfactory. Plz advise

You almost can not appeal ?

You cannot just appeal because you failed i.e. that you disagree with academic judgement. It is necessary to show that the feedback / reasons for the fail are wrong such as the marker says you failed to include something when this was included. You do not say what sections you failed. Fail in the Analysis and Evaluation is the hardest area to overturn. This section requires you to use the information you found and draw inferences and explain the significance of it. Very often students just describe the trends and calculate ratios without putting them into a relevant context and therefore although there night be basic analysis this does not reach the standard set out in the Assessment Criteria for a pass

@gillianm@ trephena Hope you are well I received my feedback showing that I have passed the RR but they have failed me on self reflection when they said my SLS is very narrow in focus ,and they said they expect to see some evaluation of strength and weakness with insight into some key transferable skill which you should be acquiring from completing RAP e.g communication ,basic MS office ,project management They fail me on communication skills when they said opening slides can be much reduced,the slides should have headings specific to what is being presented rather than chapter number how can I appeal against the feedback of the marker I have tried to put everything and do self reflect no

Well done on passing the report, which is the most time consuming and difficult part of the RAP usually. I don’t think that there are any real grounds for an appeal since although you are disappointed with the result, from the feedback I recognise a few common mistakes that students make with these elements which mean that the assessment criteria were likely to be unmet. With the SLS there is often a tendency for students to describe what went on whereas the emphasis should be on considering the impact of what you did. My tip for Q1 is to look back and as the marker says, consider strengths and weaknesses, transferable skills plus any new skills acquired and any lessons learned. Q2 on the other hand projects forwards to consider opportunities and how your future may be affected. With the Presentation slides they need to communicate effectively which means they need to be clear but not overladen with words. The ‘audience needs sufficient information and interesting slides (to hold their attention). Never make the audience have to read too much, instead use visuals graphs and charts where appropriate (interspace them i.e. don’t stack a load of graphs together) . You can usually distil info down into key points and bite-size bits and remember, you may not be able to include absolutely everything in your report into a 15 min presentation.

Dear Gillian -OBU Mentor thank you so much for your good and helpful response

hello brother, how long did it take you to hear back from the OBU people that your appeal has been successful?

hello brother, how long did it take you to hear back from the OBU people that your appeal has been successful?