The students submit their PMT exercises through the SAO (usually on Tuesday but check with the submission details on CATE). The students should use CATE to declare their submission and all submissions should have a cover sheet. Late submissions should also be declared on CATE and be submitted through the SAO. You must not accept any work directly from a student. Student submissions will be in the form of a paper copy and you should mark this and return it to the student at the next PMT meeting.
By the next PMT meeting. Timing is vital to the success of helping students to understand the PMT courses. It is the rapid feedback that allows the department to teach in such breadth and depth. The PMT exercises have to keep synchronised with the lecture courses so that the material is fresh; the exercise should be marked and returned at the next PMT meeting so that the feedback given can make a direct impact. This means that you will only have a few days between receiving a submission and reurning a marked piece of work. You will need to set aside time each week to ensure that you have time to mark the student submissions.
You should mark the submissions out of 5 and comment the submission appropriately. The returned work must bear a letter grade A..F (see the tutorial support page for a translation from numerical marks to letter grades). The comments should indicate both what is correct and what could be improved in the submission. We want the students to reflect on the way they approached the PMT tutorial questions and the grades and comments should encourage students to do this.
The grade should give the student information about their general progress with PMT work. In particular they should give the student a reasonable idea of how well they are likely to do in the exams which they need to pass if they are to continue to the second year. The script should also be annotated with an indication of the quality of the submission and how it could be improved. The annotations are very important as they constitute part of a dialogue with the student. You should expect that any comments should be taken on board and acted upon in subsequent exercises. If a student has not taken on your criticisms you can deduct marks in subsequent submissions. You also need to give your students encouragement when you are marking.
As each relates to material covered in an associated lecture course it is important that the students get feedback on how they have understood the material they haved learned recently. Students are also expected to develop general skills in problem solving as they gain more experience. Thus the marks should help the students organise their learning by indicating which areas they need to work more on. The mark given should give the student information about their general progress. In particular they should give the student a reasonable idea of how well they are likely to do in the examinations and any course works and tests. Hopefully the marks should serve to encourage students as mostly they will solve the problems well and they will see that they are making incremental progress.
The feedback given to a student on their PMT submission via annotations is the most important part of the assessment. As they have thought about the submission recently whilst they were completing it your comments will have a very direct impact. You should ask - how did the student approach the question - could they have solved it in a better way? If the student has a good neat solution you should comment this - if not you should indicate how they could improve. Many problems are fairly simple whilst others are more subtle and relate to the way they analysed the problem. Your comments should be used as a basis of a discussion of the students submissions but you should also use them to communicate your expectations to the student. In future submissions they should have applied your comments and if they do they should be able to do well in the exams and any tests.
Late submissions and missed submissions should be handled by the PMT. CATE has been modified to accept submissions up to a week late without the student requesting an extension in advance. We can mark work that is a few minutes late without asking for an explanation from the student involved. However in all other cases we will want the student to contact either their PMT or the Senior Tutor (Margaret Cunningham) to give an explanation about why their submission was handed in late. We have no obligation to mark late submissions. The PMT or Senior Tutor will deal with each individual case on its merits.
If your PMT or the Senior Tutor has agreed to accept a late submission you should mark it in the usual way.
Missed submissions are taken very seriously as we expect students
to complete all the PMT exercises set.
This is because the PMT exercises builds on the work done in previous exercises.
The loading and timings of the PMT exercises and other
coursework are carefully designed so that they are evenly distributed.
If a student starts to miss submissions or
hands PMT exercises in late this can have knock on effects.
A student will fall further behind if they skip lectures and
tutorials to catch up on missed submissions.
Missed submissions are usually a good indication of more general
problems.
It is much better if a student submits a partial solution if
they haven't completed the entire PMT exercise.
You can then give feedback and help to the student on the
basis of their submission.
You need to discuss any missed submissions with your PMT.
Generally if a student has missed more than one submission
it will be necessary to get the Senior Tutor Margaret
Cunningham involved as well and she will call in the student
to discuss any problems they may have.
You should use the tutorial support system as described in the UTA introductory page.