Summer Exam Board Period – Progression & Award Support and upcoming training sessions

Progression & Award support and resources

There are a variety of resources available to colleagues undertaking the Portico Progression & Award tasks in advance of their exam board meeting, as well as guidance on how to run the board meetings and the regulations that underpin them. Please visit our Exam Board Support webpages where you will find comprehensive information on all of the Exam Board processes, in particular:

Mark Entry Guidance

Accurate and complete mark entry is essential in ensuring the correct progression and award outcomes are calculated for your students. Please review the guidance and training materials before completing mark entry for your modules.  

Progression, Award and Classification Regulations

Here you will find the main regulations relating to progression, award and classifications.

Training materials

This section covers end to end training on running the Portico Progression & Award tasks and includes both written guidance and video walkthroughs as well as links to previous training recordings and presentations.

Preparing for Exam Boards – Data Checks

One of the biggest issues with processing progression and awards results is missing or incorrect data.  The module and enrolment information on a student’s record drives the progression and award process and determines a student’s outcome. If there are errors in this data or elements are missing, the calculated outcome will be incorrect.

Please review the guidance on our Exam Board Support web pages, in particular the information on the checks you can undertake now prior to your boards, to ensure the data for your students is accurate.

The Exam Board Data Checker report, in particular, should be used at the earliest opportunity to identify any issues with the following:

• Students missing from the report
• Incorrect number of taken credits in current year or total credits taken
• Missing or incorrect APL credits (where applicable)
• Modules marked as Non-Condonable or modules missing non-condonable status

These issues should be reported via your Student Records Query Log on your Faculty Teams site. 

Once mark entry is completed, the report should also be used to identify any issues with:

• Total credits awarded
• Progression Outcome, Qualification & Classification (once progression calculation has been run)
• Modules with incorrect or missing marks for current year of study

Exam Board Training sessions

An all-faculty session will be held 2-3.30PM on Wednesday 22^nd May (invitation to be circulated shortly) aimed at all colleagues involved in exam boards and the related Portico processes. Colleagues from the Student Records and Academic Policy, Quality and Standards teams will deliver guidance on the key Examiners regulations and timelines and the Portico progression & award tasks. This session will be recorded and added to the Exam Board Support webpages for everyone’s reference.

Portico Mark Entry training will be provided throughout May (dates and times TBC) for those colleagues new to the process or in need of a refresher. Please note, these sessions will not cover the Moodle Transfer Wizard or Assessment UCL, so please review the guidance for these processes separately.

We will also be arranging on-going ‘drop-in’ sessions via Teams throughout May and early June to assist Board Administrators with any data issues/queries in advance of their boards.

If you would like bespoke support for a particular programme or board or have new starters undertaking these processes for the first time, please get in touch with your Student Records Manager to discuss the appropriate training:

Kylie McCarroll: SLASH (Laws, Arts & Humanities and Social & Historical Sciences)
Kathryn Ball: BEAMS (Bartlett (Built Environment), Engineering Sciences, Mathematical & Physical Sciences)
Sharon Young: SLMS/IOE (IOE, Population Health Sciences)
Charlotte Robinson: SLMS/IOE (Brain Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences)

Contact email for further information: examboards@ucl.ac.uk