21.06.2003
I went to see Kevin Gates today, as did several others. I handed him this http://public.the-i.org/public.php?COMP1501-What-I-Want.html – which pretty well sums up what I wanted to know. I thought some of you might be interested in a few answers.
Feedback in the form of an assessment sheet similar to Assignment 3, and will include the marks attained for each criterion. Any student may request feedback and a remark (with the risk that your marks may go down), however a deadline has been set – request it before 27 June or miss out.
Apparently, three people, including Kevin, marked assignment two. Kevin admitted there was clear bias, and that one marker had returned results that were noticeably below the other results. Some or all of these results were adjusted upwards in an attempt to normalize them against the results returned by the other two markers, and Kevin remarked some of these. All markers were supposed to fill in the feedback sheet for each student, however apparently only Kevin did.
Kevin acknowledged that we were not given clear criteria showing the marks allocated for each criterion, however there is not much that can be done about that now. He also stated that he has been particularly lenient in an attempt to offset some of the problems – particularly those experienced by people who may not have had any or much experience with HTML or PHP.
Essentially, Kevin admitted that results have been unfair, biased and wrong – and that he is aware of the shortcomings and problems and is attempting to rectify what he can. However, you must request a remark before 27 June or your current results will stand.
While I am not happy with the biased results that we’re stuck with – there is no practical solution this late in the course. The one issue that was not addressed, that I believe ideally should have been, is that some assignments seem to have achieved too high a result, unfairly disadvantaging those who deserved a higher result and skewing the results - but it’s clearly unfair to lower already released marks unless that student requests a reassessment.
I believe that this concludes the assignment two saga.
As stated elsewhere, this course will be modified the next time it is run.