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11th June 2012
The Final Taught Module of the AMI Course AMI4041 Project Management for Electronics Starting Thur. 14/6/12
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Assignments
- How to determine when an assignment is due
- What if you miss a deadline?
- How to send us your completed assignment
- Marks and descriptions
- The Examination Board
- Plagiarism and how to avoid it
- University policy on plagiarism
Relevant university regulations
- Assessment Regulations for the Postgraduate Modular Framework (PDF)
- Examination Regulations 2006/07 (PDF)
How to determine when an assignment is due
A panel at the top of each assignment states when the assignment is due in terms of study weeks, for example:
| Submission Date: Midnight on Wednesday at the end of study week 6. Please refer to this year's calendar for the date. |
To relate the end of a study week to a real date, view the calendar for the year in question. Dates for the beginning and end of each study week are listed, e.g. the deadline of midnight can be taken to be local time or UK time - whichever is later. Students from outside the UK and studying to the East of Greenwich will probably prefer to go by UK time, as it will give them a bit longer. Those located to the West of Greenwich will probably prefer to go by their local time.
What if you miss a deadline?
Sending an assignment late causes disruption. It is better for everyone if tutors can assess work in batches because marking is then fairer and more efficient. A single late assignment affects everyone because it means the assignments are likely to be returned later than they should have been. Furthermore, since every part-time student has difficulty juggling study time with other commitments there has to be an incentive for completing work on time.
The arrangements below have been approved by the Programmes Committee and
the Examination Board. The submission date is the date when the work left
your premises.
| Assignment Submission Date | Arrangements |
|---|---|
| On time |
The assignment will be marked and the tutor's comments and feedback will be relayed back to the student. The mark will be submitted to the Exam Board for approval when it next meets. |
| Up to one* week late |
The assignment will be marked as normal and the tutor's comments and feedback will be relayed back to the student. 20% will be deducted* and the resulting mark will be submitted to the Exam Board for approval when it next meets. |
| More than one* week late | The assignment will be marked as normal and the tutor's comments and feedback will be relayed back to the student. The mark will be submitted to the Exam Board who will then make a decision what penalty (if any) should apply. In reaching a decision the Exam Board will take into consideration any mitigating circumstances. Mitigating circumstances must be submitted in writing, addressed to the Chairman of the Exam Board for Postgraduate Electronics Programmes using a confidential form and envelope. Forms and envelopes are available from the Student Centre or from the CET Postgraduate Programmes Office.
* The Programmes Committee shortened the late submission period from two weeks to one week with effect from November 2005. The marks deducted for late submission is now a percentage (20%) rather than an absolute grade. The Programmes Committee has also agreed that letter from an employer stating that required travel away from base has significantly affected the time available for study is deemed acceptable as mitigating circumstances. Such a letter should be addressed to the Course Leader and does not need to be submitted in the special envelope. (This is an exception to the norm and only applies to the postgraduate electronics programmes studied wholly by distance learning). |
How to send us your completed assignment
Assignments may be submitted to the Electronics Postgraduate Programmes Office by any method, including email, fax and surface mail. Email is preferred - please send to the email address listed below. We will acknowledge receipt of your assignment, by email, normally within 24 hours. If you have not heard from us within two days please contact us to check that we have received it.
| Method | Destination |
|---|---|
| ami@bolton.ac.uk | |
| Fax | + 44 (0)1204 903088 |
| Surface mail | Electronics Postgraduate Programmes Office, University of Bolton, Deane Road, Bolton, BL3 5AB, UK |
Make sure your name appears on the front page of the document. Our preference is to receive assignment reports as one document in MS Word format. If the assignment calls for one or more additional files, such as a spreadsheet or project plan, then of course, we will expect that too. Please do not send multiple small files that need to be printed separately before they can be passed to the tutor - it makes extra work and introduces the possibility that something will be overlooked. Equally, please avoid zipping files just to compress them - that too only makes more work and the compression doesn't often amount to much.
Most assignments are less than 1MB, but sometimes you will need to send something bigger. The email system is reliable for files up 9 MB but if your file is significantly larger than 5 MB, the best thing to do is to split it into two parts and send each part attached to a separate email. If you are sending more than one file, or splitting a large file, please make this clear in the text of the email.
An electronic copy of your assignment will be retained for inspection by
the External Examiner. It will help us if you use this convention for naming
files:
M<module number>A<assignment number><your surname>.<extension>
e.g. M4019A2Attwood.doc, is a Word file containing Assignment 2 for Module 4019 for student Attwood.
Marks and Descriptions
Marks are based on the assessment criteria stated in the Assessment Regulations for the Postgraduate Modular Framework (linked from the top of this page), but with some alterations for the electronics programmes. (The marks for the pass bands have been increased by 10 and a new description introduced for the range 40-49).
The assessment of each piece of work will be disclosed to each student in terms of a percentage mark, as indicated in the table below. The result for the completed module will likewise be notified as a percentage mark.
| Description | Mark |
|---|---|
| Work of Exceptional Quality | 80 - 100 |
| Work of Very Good Quality | 70 - 79 |
| Work of Good Quality | 60 - 69 |
| Work of Quality | 50 - 59 |
| Work of Adequate Standard | 40 - 49 |
| Borderline Fail | 35 - 39 |
| Clear Fail | 0 - 34 |
Work of Exceptional Quality
Virtually all of the relevant knowledge and/or skills accurately deployed. Excellent and exceptional grasp of theoretical, conceptual, analytical and practical elements. Very effective integration of theory, practice and information in relation to the objectives of the assessment. Substantial evidence of originality and creativity as appropriate to the subject.
Work of Very Good Quality
Most of the relevant knowledge and/or skills accurately deployed. Good grasp of theoretical, conceptual, analytical and practical elements. Effective integration of theory, practice and information in relation to the objectives of the assessment. Significant evidence of originality and creativity as appropriate to the subject.
Work of Good Quality
Some of the relevant knowledge and/or skills accurately deployed. Adequate grasp of theoretical, conceptual, analytical and practical elements. Fair integration of theory, practice and information in relation to the objectives of the assessment. Some evidence of originality and creativity as appropriate to the subject.
Work of Quality
Some omissions in the deployment of knowledge and/or skills. Some grasp of theoretical, conceptual. analytical and practical elements. Limited integration of theory, practice and information in relation to the objectives of the assessment. Limited evidence of originality and creativity as appropriate.
Work of Adequate Standard
Discipline benchmarks at appropriate level satisfied.
Borderline Fail
Deficiencies or omissions in knowledge, skills, theoretical, conceptual, practical elements. Limited integration of these in relation to the assessed works objectives. Some relevant content and marginal evidence of skills, knowledge or creativity which could, in the light of overall performance, constitute the basis for a pass grade in the examiner's judgement.
Clear Fail
Little evidence of the knowledge, skills, theoretical, conceptual, analytical, creative or practical elements relevant to the assessment. Mainly irrelevant and/or incorrect information provided. Scant evidence of understanding of the requirements of the assessment.
The Examination Board
The postgraduate electronics programmes fit within the Modular Master framework of the University of Bolton. The Examinations Board is authorised to assess student performance in accordance with the assessment regulations and to assess any referred or deferred work. It works under the guidelines and terms of reference specified by the Academic Quality and Standards Unit. The rights, responsibilities and conduct of the Board shall be in accordance with the current policies and regulations of the University of Bolton. The Examinations Board meets three times a year to consider student progress and make recommendations for an award.
Terms of Reference
- To receive recommendations from Module Tutors and Project Supervisors and to determine stage and final awards for the students.
- To agree and pronounce the arrangements for the re-assessment and to determine the outcomes of any re-assessment.
- To arrive at impartial, consistent decisions using standards similar to those of other institutions of higher education.
- To agree to any proposed changes to assessment procedures.
The External Examiner will in addition:
- Approve the form and content of assessments and inspect and ratify or otherwise marks awarded for the dissertations produced from project work.
- Report to the Academic Quality and Standards Unit on the assessment procedures and the general quality of the course.
Feedback from the Examination Board
After every Examination Board meeting each student will be issued with a transcript detailing results for each module studied to date. Any requirement for referred work to be re-submitted will be mentioned and the deadline for submission clearly stated.
Plagiarism and how to avoid it
This advice relates to students on the distance learning postgraduate programmes from the Department of Computing and Electronic Technology. Although much of what follows is general, it may not be adequate for other courses, and parts of the two sub-sections may not apply to other courses. Students who are not enrolled on these courses should seek advice from their Programme Leader.
Copying from any source (textbook, website or other student) without making it clear this has been done is known as plagiarism and is regarded as a serious offence in the category "use of unfair means". Section 2 of the university's Examination Regulations (linked from the top of this page) has much to say on the topic and 2(ix) includes examples of plagiarism (see below). Section 6 of the regulations list various penalties which may be applied, ranging from awarding a mark of zero to permanent expulsion from the university!
Avoiding plagiarism means being aware of the issues and then being honest and fair to your sources. Here are some guidelines:
- If you copy something directly, make it clear that you have done so and state the author and publication. Quotation marks, italics or indentation are suitable methods of identifying a passage as long as the source is specified nearby, so there can be no mistake.
- If you paraphrase something, or summarise a number of references, list the sources you have used.
- Do not copy any work that has been submitted previously by another student.
Assistance at work
We recognise that students in a classroom situation benefit significantly from the tutor or demonstrator. We do our best to emulate this using design walthroughs and tutor support by email / telephone but there will be occasions when a word from a colleague is a more effective way of assisting. When this happens it is not dissimilar from a classroom activity and as such is deemed acceptable in an elearning course.
This is not to say that someone else can do the work for you, since that would be unfair and a clear case of plagiarism. It is a question of degree: colleagues are welcome to advise but must not contribute original work. If you are in any doubt, it is best to give an acknowledgement to your colleague and state specifically the area where they have made a useful contribution.
Collaboration
A distinction is made between the investigative stage of an assignment and the implementation stage. It would not be unusual for students to collaborate with each other and with colleagues in the investigative stages. Obtaining information from a variety of sources is expected and encouraged.
However, students are expected to collate, analyse, distill and integrate this information themselves and to undertake the implementation (including CAD) individually, arriving at their own conclusions (where appropriate) and delivering a report that is clearly individual.
If students were to collaborate and share the results, the university's regulations (see below) make it clear that this would be interpreted as collusion which is an example of plagiarism.
University Policy on Plagiarism
Extract from Examination Regulations 2004/05 - Section 2(ix)
"Plagiarism may be defined as the representation of another person's work, without acknowledgement of the source, as the student's own for the purposes of satisfying formal assessment requirements.
Examples of plagiarism are:
- the use in a student's own work of normally more than a single phrase from another person's work without the use of quotation marks and/or indentation, or other conventionally accepted form of identification and acknowledgement of the source, normally including at least the name of the author, date of publication and page number where the quotation is to be found;
- the summarising of another person's work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation, without acknowledgement;
- the use of ideas of intellectual data of another person without acknowledgement of the source, or the submission or presentation of work as if it were the student's own, which are substantially the ideas or intellectual data of another person;
- copying the work of another person;
- collusion, where two or more students collaborate to produce a piece of work which is then submitted as though it was an individual student's own work; where students in a class are instructed or encouraged to work together in the pursuit of an assignment, such a group activity is regarded as approved collaboration; where there is a requirement for the submitted work to be solely that of the individual, collaboration is not permitted; students who improperly work collectively in these circumstances will be regarded as being guilty of collusion;
- the submission of work, as if it were the student's own, which has been obtained from the internet or any other form of information technology;
- the submission of coursework making significant use of unattributed digital images such as graphs, tables, photographs, etc. taken from books/articles, the internet or from the work of another person;
- the submission of a piece of work which has previously been assessed for a different award or module or at a different institution as if it were new work;
- a student who allows or is involved in allowing another student to copy another's work (including physical or digital images) would be deemed to be guilty of plagiarism. "
Avoiding Plagiarism - general guidance
For general guidance on avoiding plagiarism, please refer to pages 44 - 46 of the Examination Regulations (linked from the top of this page).
Change record
24.01.06 References to letter grades (A - F) and intermediate grades (+
and -) removed.
RA & JO
09.01.07 Marks for the pass bands increased by 10. New description introduced for the range 40-49. RA