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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Volume 40 Number 9. April 26 1977
Chem 101: Practical Assessment
Chem 101: Practical Assessment.
By the end of the year about 20% of Chem 101 students will have found the workload (up to seven hours over and above the scheduled lab/lecture time,) social and scholastic suicide.
One of the areas in which students find difficulty is the laboratory requirements. Three hours a week are spent actually doing experiments. Problems associated with the practical work and its subsequent write-up are many. It often takes three hours to do a write up, and even then if the initial results do not agree with the expected result, mediocre or poor marks are obtained.
The demonstrators are too few to cope with adequately with all the experiments that they are supposed to explain and supervise. Most of the demonstrators are post-graduate students who have their own heavy workload, so that they may not devote the necessary time to give a fair assessment of write-ups.
Different demonstrators have differing standards — some demand detailed explanations, while others will take marks off for a write-up they consider too wordy.
So far the chemistry department hasn't really explained to chem students what are their rights regarding assessment of chemistry practicals.
| 1. | The right of appeal over a poor mark, firstly to the demonstrator who marked the lab and then if you're still unhappy about their explanations to the person in charge of that laboratory. |
| 2. | The right to an extension of time for the handing in of lab books. |
| 3. | The right to ask demonstrators, lecturers and tutors questions about difficulties in the experiment and its write-up. |
| 4. | The right to arrange times to redo part or all of an experiment in which you feel you could better your previous marks. |
It is likely that there will be no major changes in chemistry practical assessment until we students realise and ask for these rights.
At the end of the first term there are still no major changes in last year's method of assessment even though it seems to be deficient in the areas already indicated.
— T. Wegrzyn & A. R Cairns.