Marks and Exam Boards Administration

Service Description

The service is a web-based toolkit supporting the administration of marks and exam boards in academic units, reducing staff workload and promoting compliance with University regulatory policy.

This is done by providing a suite of tools which helps to maintain data quality and auditability whilst enabling efficient business processes. Training and documentation is available to enable service users to optimise their marks and exam board business processes for their individual academic unit and to improve the related inter-departmental marks and exam board business processes.

We liaise with Student Progress Service, QuiLT and University Regulations Committee representatives to identify service implications arising from proposed changes to the regulations.

Features

Core supported features – administration of marks and exam boards:

  • Recording original component and module marks, all subsequent changes for auditing purposes and performing all calculations and scaling up to and including the final classification and average for a student’s course. Marks and decisions are then in a format that can be uploaded to SAP
  • Dissertation marking support for multiple markers and individual allocation of markers to students
  • Recording of comments on individual pieces of work
  • Module assessment configuration to University regulations based on MOFS, re-sit and alternative assessment configuration and customised setup for individual students
  • Customised exam board displays and setup to support moderation and final exam boards
  • Recording coursework as late or on-time and automatic capping to University regulations; definition of due dates; extension recording
  • Student view of marks
  • Delegated profile management for authorized users including ability to add staff into units
  • Reporting tailored to the requirements of each level of the University related to marks and exam boards

Other features currently available in the toolkit are supported on a “best-effort” basis only.

Users

A list of supported academic units is in the Service Help menu within the application.

For each supported unit:

  • Key users (listed on the Service Help menu)
  • All students taking modules or courses related to that unit
  • All academic staff marked as teachers or contributors on modules in MOFS

Service Hours

Service is available 24/7. 

The “at risk” period is 07:00-09:00 every Tuesday. Further planned maintenance times will be publicised in advance if there will be a disruption to the service. Key users will be notified of any planned maintenance which may have an impact on the service.

Level of Service

Support targets (resolution time):

  • Service unavailable (2 hours)
  • Urgent core feature failure, for example a bug that prevents an exam board from running next day (1 working day)
  • Low impact<work around> core feature failure (1 working week)
  • Low impact<work around>  non-core feature failure (six months)
  • Change requests (six months)

Support and Documentation

 User support and training materials are available from within the application via a structured help menu.

Additional support is available via the IT Service Desk.

All incidents relating to this service will be handled according to the Incident Management and Major Incident Management processes.

Request Process

To access the system (provided your academic is unit is enabled):

  1. Browse to https://ness.ncl.ac.uk  
  2. Log in with your usual University Login ID and password

Requests for administrative staff to be given access to an enabled academic unit within the system should be made to the key users for that unit. The key users can set the permissions for those staff.

Requests for additional academic units to use the service should be raised via the Service Desk.

Requests for any other aspect of the service should be made via the IT Service Desk.

All requests relating to this service will be handled according to the Request Fulfilment process.

User Responsibility

Academic units

Each academic unit must nominate three to five key users (listed in the Help menu) in their unit whose responsibility will be to handle all support from within their unit and refer to the IT Service Desk if necessary. The key users also serve as primary points of contact for their unit. Academic units should notify the Service Desk of any changes to key users.

When an academic unit commits to using the service they must agree to enter all marks for their unit on time and inform us if this has not been done.

Governing bodies

Student Progress Service, QuiLT and University Regulations Committee are required to consult with the IT Service when policy changes are planned.

Costs

N/A