What will exams and assessments look like this year? Updated assessment guidance published, 2022-23

This article highlights key changes from last year.

Exams and Assessments Regulations 

A new one-stop-shop on the Exams and Assessments webpages contains all guidance and support you need to prepare and complete assessments at UCL.  

Read the Student Regulations for Exams and Assessments 2022-23 

As in previous years, you may sit Centrally Managed or Departmentally Managed assessments and you are reminded to check the guidance and regulations for each of your assessments.

Updates to late submission penalties 

Any Online Controlled Exam completed on AssessmentUCL, has a 20 minute upload window.  

For 2022-23, in addition to this 20-minute upload window, you will receive an additional invisible late submission window of 40 minutes. 

If you submit in the 20 minute upload window, before the 40 minutes grace period starts, you will not be subject to penalties. 

If you submit your exams after the deadline, but within the 40 minutes you will receive the following percentage deduction penalties: 

• A 5% deduction (but no lower than the pass mark) for submissions up to 5 minutes late. 
• A 10% deduction (but no lower than the pass mark) for up to 10 minutes late.  
• Marks will be capped at the pass mark for submissions between 10 and 40 minutes late. 
• At 40 minutes, students will no longer be able to submit their exam.

View example of how penalties would be applied

  

	Original mark	Up to and including 5:00 minutes late	Between 5:01 and 10:00 minutes late	Between 10:01 and 40 minutes late	40:01 or more minutes late
No Technical Failure Approval	75	70	65	PASS	No work marked. 0% given
No Technical Failure Approval	49	44	PASS	PASS	No work marked. 0% given
Technical Failure Approval	75	75	75	75	Deferral to next normal occasion

Should you experience genuine technical failures, you can submit a claim to have the late submission penalties suspended and to have your work marked as normal. 

Undergraduate students have a 40% pass mark and Postgraduate Taught students have a 50% pass mark.  

Upload requirements 

Learning from your experiences over the past two years, we understand that the upload requirements for assessments can vary. Assessment submissions vary from a straightforward PDF upload to uploads that require more time to collate, which take more time to submit.  

This year, the regulations have been updated to take this into account. We have defined two types of exam submissions that you might need to undertake.  

These are:  

• Type 1: Additional collation time required. Time-consuming upload requirements, such as scanning handwritten pages or inserting photographs into a document and converting to PDF.  
• Type 2: No additional collation time required Those that require writing in a document, for example, in MS Word, and converting to a PDF.  

The type of assessment will be predefined in AssessmentUCL and you will not need to do anything. 

Student Support Framework  

A newly created Student Support Framework explains the main academic support processes available to help you and how you can apply for support such as extensions, reasonable adjustments, or taking time out from your studies. Find out about the support available to you.  

New Extenuating Circumstances process  

As part of the updates for 2022-23, our Extenuating Circumstances process has been updated.  

‘Extenuating Circumstances’ (often know as ‘ECs’) are events which are sudden, unexpected, significantly disruptive and beyond your control and which may affect your performance at summative assessment, such as a serious illness or the death of a close relative. 

Find out how and when to use the Extenuating Circumstances process. You will now submit any Extenuating Circumstances claim through Portico. Read this guide on how to submit an EC claim on Portico.