Extensions and Special Circumstances systems for students and staff (ESC Team, Student Support Staff, Student Advisers, and Wellbeing Advisers) have been updated to implement the Exceptional Circumstances Policy (approved March 2024). Exceptional Circumstances systems changes since September 2024Sep 12, 2024 Release Summary of changes Extensions and Special Circumstances systems for students and staff (ESC Team, Student Support Staff, Student Advisers, and Wellbeing Advisers) have been updated to implement the Exceptional Circumstances Policy (approved March 2024). Student systems Students can select to apply for any of the following on the very first screen - Extensions, Exceptional Circumstances and Extra Time Learning Adjustments. When applying for extensions, students can self-certify for up to 3 extensions per academic year (Sep – Aug) and will receive instant approvals for extensions on coursework submissions within 10 days of the due dates. Students eligible for extra time learning adjustments can apply for extensions and extra time for adjustments, as is currently possible. Students can apply for Exceptional Circumstances (EC), while providing details about the circumstances, impact on their assessments and sufficient evidence. The EC application process will be easier and will clearly indicate when an application is not complete and the steps that need to be completed. Students applying for Exceptional Circumstances due to bereavement, sexual harassment or gender-based violence will not be required to provide evidence to complete an application. Staff systems The EC Service, Student Support Staff, Student Advisers and Wellbeing Advisers will continue to be able to view and open Extensions, Special Circumstances (cases submitted before Sep 12, 2024) and Exceptional Circumstances cases (submitted from Sep 12, 2024). Staff will have a new view of the extensions cases with details that are the same as received by students so that staff and students are on the same page. Minor improvements have been made to the staff dashboard to display the case type and its eligibility. Nov 21, 2024 Release The mid-November release of EC systems changes include improvements and bug fixes. Improvements The Assessment Support Tool will enable students to easily navigate to the ETA tool if they have schedule of adjustments in place. Clicking on the ETA button in the Assessment Support Tool will take students directly to the ETA tool (which in the past would require them to ‘learn’ how to navigate to the ETA tool within Student Self Service). Emails confirming extensions will also provide guidance for group assessments. Students will be requested to inform their school and group members of the extensions received so that other members of the group can also receive extensions for the assessment. Links to the new webpages have been added in a few places for Extensions and Exceptional Circumstances application. These include, but are not limited to, links to web pages explaining the situations that qualify for Exceptional Circumstances (EC) and relevant forms of evidence for EC applications that students can provide. With the changes in the EdWeb infrastructure in the university, old links have been replaced with new ones to prevent any errors when redirects are stopped. Usability improvements to Extensions and Exceptional Circumstances applications including Clarifying statuses of EC applications Displaying the ‘Confirm assessments’ button in a highlighted panel at the bottom of the screen to ensure that students provide assessments from all courses before confirming them. This change will ensure that students do not create multiple EC applications, one for each course for the same situation. Improved accessibility for users accessing the system with keyboard only. Bug fixes Students were previously receiving errors when uploading valid documents for evidence. These errors have been corrected. EC service will be able to unallocate cases in the EC Service Dashboard. Nov 28, 2024 Release With the new Exceptional Circumstances Policy implemented for academic year 2024/25, the outcome decisions for courses (made by the Exceptional Circumstances Committees or ECCs) and for progression and award (made by the Board of Examiners or BoEs) are now different. The course outcomes which were previously outlined in Section 10.2 of the Special Circumstances Policy are now replaced by those in Section 10.5 of the Exceptional Circumstances Policy. Progression and award decisions from Section 11.2 of the Special Circumstances Policy are replaced by those in Section 10.6 of the Exceptional Circumstances Policy. Updated Outcomes in APT The new outcomes have been updated in the Assessment and Progression Tools (APT) in EUCLID. You will see these outcomes when providing outcome recommendations or accepting outcomes for the ECC or BoE, under Process Course Results’ or ‘Progression and Awards’. Updated outcomes in the Special and Exceptional Circumstances BI reports Once you have provided outcome recommendations in APT, the list of new outcomes will be displayed in the ‘Special and Exceptional Circumstances (SEC)’ BI report (previously called the ‘Special Circumstances (SC)’ BI report. Older outcomes from the SC Policy that have been provided to students before 2024/25 will still be visible in the BI report. As a reminder, these reports can be found within the BI Suite (accessible via MyEd) within the folder Public Folders/SASG : Student Systems/Officially Dev & Maintained/Student/Assessment and Progression Tools/Special Circumstances.Other than the outcomes and the wording changes to include ‘Exceptional Circumstances’, there are no other changes to the BI report. Updated outcomes available to students when marks are publishedOnce outcomes have been provided in APT and confirmed, and students’ marks and progression decisions are published, they see the outcomes provided to them within the Assessment Support Tool (Exceptional Circumstances system) and when they view their marks for the academic year in Student Self-Service. Please note that the outcome descriptions that students receive have been made simpler and more descriptive, albeit providing the same outcome, so they will not match word to word with those visible to you in APT. Below are the assessment outcomes that staff and students will see.Staff-view of assessment outcomes in APTEquivalent student-view of assessment outcomes in EC systems and Student Self Servicea) No action - the actions available would not be in a student’s best academic interest.a) We will not take further action, as the available options will not improve your academic outcome.b) No action, consider for progression or award decision.b) We have not taken action at this stage and will consider taking action when making an award or progression decision. c) Disregard penalties for late submission of coursework.c) You will not receive late penalties for this coursework.d) Disregard missing or unreliable component(s).d) Marks for your affected assessments will not be counted towards your course result calculation.e) Record course as ‘null sit’. Student can repeat some/all assessments, on a first sit basis.e) Your course will be marked as a 'null sit,' allowing you to retake some or all assessments without penalty.f) Re-submit PG dissertation.f) You will be allowed to re-submit your PG dissertation. g) Permit the student to take specially prepared alternative assessments.g) You will be able to take an alternative assessment.h) If course result is borderline, award 'pass'.h) We have awarded you a 'pass' because your course mark was borderline. Below are course or progression outcomes that staff and students will see. Staff-view of courses and progression outcomes in APT Equivalent student-view of courses and progression outcomes in EC systems and Student Self Service a) No further action - the actions available would not be in a student’s best academic interest.a) We will not take further action, as the available options will not improve your academic outcome.b) Where course mark is missing/unreliable, exclude affected course(s) from progression/award.b) The result for this course will not be included in your progression or award calculations.c) Allow graduation without required number and/or level of credits.c) You will be allowed to graduate without the required number and/or level of credits.Student view of the outcomes in Assessment Support Tool (EC systems) Student view of the outcomes in Student Self Service Updated outcomes will also be visible in the Exceptional Circumstances staff dashboard for Student Support, Student Advisers and Wellbeing AdvisersStudent Support staff, Student Advisers and Wellbeing Advisers will see the same outcomes, which will be the updated outcomes for 2024/25, on their EC dashboard when they are viewing cases where outcomes have been provided, just as students do. This would allow advisory staff to be on the same page as students. With this update the ‘Report issue’ button within the EC system will now direct students to the updated webform that receives the required details to troubleshoot issues and send an email to the EC Service. Feb 04, 2025 Release Preventing errors with extensions applied within 3 mins – It was observed that some (about 10-15) students were applying for extensions within 3 mins of their previous application. This was giving them an error. The extensions application has been improved to prevent these errors giving students a more helpful message instead. Adding multiple assessments to create EC applications – The EC Service create EC applications for students when requested by the school. In doing so, they currently select one assessment at a time to add to the application. With these changes, the EC Service will be able to bulk add multiple first-sit assessments to create EC applications. This will not be available for resit assessments. Finding a list of EC cases that have been completed with evidence – Currently, the EC Service review the entire list of EC cases to find those with pending decisions because they did not previously have evidence. To enable quickly finding these cases, the project team has added filters in the staff EC dashboard to enable finding the list of EC cases where evidence has been added. These filters will also be available to Student Support staff and Student Advisers. Link for more information on using filters added – It has been noted that the existing filters within the EC dashboard require advanced user expertise. A link to a Sharepoint page describing the usage of the filters has been added next to the filters feature as the first step to supporting our EC dashboard school users. Forthcoming changes after Feb 2025 Further improvements to these systems are underway and planned for later this year and in early 2025. These include Improved display of statuses for students and staff so that student applications can be facilitated by Student Advisers and Support Staff. This article was published on 2024-09-12
