Review of Delayed Assessment Scheme after term 1

The Delayed Assessment Scheme has now been operational for a full term, offering students three Delayed Assessment Permits per Academic Year to use as they see fit.

We have recently captured feedback from staff and students to understand how well this new initiative is working and any areas for improvement. Staff feedback was gathered from departments by DAPs champions and shared with us in a group discussion. Student feedback was captured via a survey sent to students who submitted a DAP in term 1 (412 responses were received).  

Overall, feedback shows that the scheme has been positively received by staff and students. 97% of students report that DAPs improve their academic experience and help them to balance studies with other events in their life. 95% of students said that it was easy to use their DAP on Portico.

Staff feel that the scheme enhances the student experience and reduces overhead for EC panels.

Key areas for improvement are:

• DAPs submission deadlines for SORA students: it is confusing and disadvantaging for SORA students to submit their DAP before the assessment deadline, rather than their SORA deadline. Whilst this can currently be done manually, it requires staff intervention. 

As part of the Beyond the SORA programme, we are seeking to redesign the SORA on Portico workflow and we will consider this issue as part of this work. We are also investigating whether there are any shorter-term improvements that we can make over the coming term.  

• Increase in administrative workload to update new assessment dates in Moodle: we are working with the Virtual Learning Environments team to identify opportunities for automation and will update on plans for this in due course, especially if anything is possible this academic year.
• Reporting: there are requests for enhanced reporting including reason for DAPs and number of DAPs used by a student. We will be looking at this over the coming term.

We also heard that some Module Markers have experienced disruption to marking plans where high volumes of students have used a DAP for an extension. We encourage departments to consider the potential for DAPs extensions (5 working days) when planning marking / mark entry dates and ensure that you have sufficient contingency. This is particularly important for assessments in May where there is a short window of time before the Mark Exchange Deadline (Monday 16 June).

Snapshot of student feedback

• 97% of students agreed that “using a DAP helped me to balance my studies with other events in my life”
• 97% of students agreed that “the availability of DAPs improves my academic experience at UCL”
• 95% of students agreed that “using a DAP helped me to manage my wellbeing”
• 95% of students said “it was easy to use my DAP on Portico”

DAPs usage statistics for term 1 have also been reported to UCL’s Education Policy Scrutiny Panel who are pleased that the Delayed Assessment Scheme is operating in line with expectations; notably that the majority of DAPs are used for 5 working day extensions and fewer evidenced ECs are being submitted, along with more rejections of evidenced ECs.

Contact for further information: currentstudent@ucl.ac.uk