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The University
of Western Australia University Policy
on: Award of Honours Purpose of the
policy and summary of issues it addresses: This policy seeks to rationalise
the award of honours across the University by addressing such issues as entry standards,
course content and structure, supervision, assessment, examination, grades,
classifications, benchmarking and the maintenance and provision of
documentation relating to these matters. It is based on resolutions of the
Academic Board flowing from the 1999 report of the Honours Working Party. Definitions: In this policy, "UWA" means The
University of Western Australia. Policy statement: 1 Circumstances
under which Honours can be Awarded 1.1 The award of
honours at UWA results only from successful completion of a degree or, in rare
cases, a diploma course that includes a distinctive dissertation- or
portfolio-based component. This component trains and assesses students'
abilities to contribute to the future development of their disciplines through research
that extends existing knowledge and/or through the original and creative
application of knowledge in ways likely to impact upon future thinking in their
fields of study. 1.2 The dissertation
or portfolio component of each honours course must contribute at least 20 per
cent towards the final honours grade. 1.3 Where it is
desired to recognise overall distinguished performance within a pass degree
course of study that does not contain a research dissertation or portfolio
component, the degree may be awarded with "distinction" or with the
descriptor "(with honours)" rather than "(Honours)". 2 Honours
Documentation 2.1 Deans must hold
current copies of the honours documentation provided by schools within their
faculties and provide appropriate guidance to schools to ensure that such
documentation includes adequate information concerning:
2.2 Small schools
must ensure that, despite limited numbers of honours' students, they provide
appropriate documentation as required under 2.1. 2.3 School
documentation must clearly and accurately convey to students the actual manner
in which their work will be assessed and their honours' grade assigned. If
schools wish to take flexible account of a variety of factors, the
documentation must indicate the nature of this flexibility and specify what
these factors will be, how they will be appraised, and the manner in which they
will bear upon the determination of the honours' grade. 2.4 Faculties and
schools must ensure that the documentation provided to honours' students
contains appropriate information and advice concerning the acquisition and
utilisation of supervision, and clearly indicates the responsibilities of both
the student and the supervisor within this relationship. 3 Benchmarking 3.1 At least once
during each period between school reviews, a school must execute a benchmarking
exercise to appraise structure, processes and outcomes associate with its
honours' programmes. 3.2 Documentation of
the benchmarking, describing both the procedure adopted and the data yielded by
the exercise, must constitute part of each school's review submission, enabling
this to be appraised as part of the normal review process. 3.3 In the light of
the appraisal referred to in 3.2, the review team will be requested to comment
on how the school conception of first class work compares against national
benchmarks within the relevant discipline. 4 Assessment
of Dissertations 4.1 Honours'
dissertations must be assessed by at least two markers. 4.2 The use of an
external marker for honours' dissertations must be promoted and actively
encouraged by faculties when practical. 4.3 Schools must
develop and employ a documented set of explicit conceptual criteria to classify
their honours' dissertations and must distribute them to all honours' students
prior to commencement of their honours' studies and provide them to examiners
when any dissertation is assessed. 4.4 Schools must have
a clear policy concerning the approach that will be taken to resolve any
disagreement between dissertation markers. This policy must include a
definition of what will constitute disagreement, and how additional information
obtained will be employed to resolve it. The central goals of this resolution
process are to identify, discuss and evaluate those differences of opinion that
underpin the disagreement, and to minimise the influence of any input that
appears to be based on misconception or unsustainable argument. 4.5 Whenever
possible, schools must follow the desirable practice of excluding supervisors
from marking their own students' dissertations. Supervisors, however, are
expected to submit a report outlining their students' demonstrated levels of
independence and initiative, and this will be considered when markers assign
their grades. Also, supervisors must be given the opportunity to view and
comment upon assessors' reports, before any final grade is assigned, in order
to identify and correct possible errors, misunderstandings or oversights. 4.6 If,
notwithstanding 4.5, supervisors mark their own students' dissertations, they
must award marks based on the criteria described in 4.3, rather than their
personal evaluation of these honours' students. 4.7 After assessment
of an honours' dissertation, the student concerned must be provided with a
brief report which outlines the main strengths and weaknesses of the
dissertation. 5 Assessment
of other Honours Programme Components 5.1 Schools must
ensure that the assessment of all honours' coursework components is conducted
in a manner consistent with those principles specified within the UWA policy
document, Minimum Essential for
Good Practice in Assessment. 6 Assignment of
Final Honours' Grade 6.1 Schools must
fully document any procedures that will be followed to assign honours' grades,
if such grades are not to be entirely determined by students' weighted mean
marks. This documentation must make clear both procedural mechanisms and
governing principles, and be made available to students. 6.2 The assignment of
honours' grades must be guided exclusively by the profile of each student's
formally assessed performance across those course components explicitly
specified as contributing towards the honours' grade. 7 Equivalent
Programmes of Study Available through Different Faculties 7.1 Faculties must
specify the latest acceptable honours' dissertation submission date for
students taking out each of their degrees. Any school admitting students from
different faculties into the same honours' programme must set a single
dissertation submission date that must be no later than the earliest date set
by either faculty except with the approval of both deans. This school
submission deadline will then apply to all students taking this honours
programme, with penalties for later submission beyond this date being
equivalent for students enrolled through either faculty. 7.2 Whenever
differing faculty criteria associated with honours' entry result in students
who have completed the same programme of study in a discipline not having the
same right of access to a school's honours' programme in that discipline, the
head of that school must negotiate with both deans to determine the common set
of entry criteria that will apply to all students. Only if such negotiations
fail to produce an acceptable resolution to the inequity should these parties
then bring the matter to Academic Council, where the issue will be discussed
further and resolved. 7.3 Equity
considerations require that students who show the same levels of performance
when completing the same honours' programme receive the same honours' grades
regardless of their faculties. A common scale, as set out below, is therefore
employed within all end-on honours' courses to demarcate honours' grade
boundaries in terms of final recorded marks: First class:
80% and above Upper second
class: 70% and above Lower second
class: 60% and above Third class:
50% and above 8 Competition
for Scholarships 8.1 When applications
for scholarships are forwarded to schools for assessment, heads of school are
requested to provide, where possible, the percentage of the whole mark
represented by the dissertation component as well as the mark given for the
dissertation. Related forms:
(Link)
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