University of Auckland students will have their grades scaled up for this semester.
This comes after an open letter from the Auckland University Students’ Association (AUSA) at the end of April calling for the university to consider implementing a policy allowing no student’s existing GPA to be negatively affected by their grades this semester.
The University’s earlier measures towards grades was only allowing students receiving grades between C- and C+ to omit these grades from being calculated towards their GPA.
The University said last Friday it is now acknowledging students’ of all levels of performance have been “moderately impaired” by the disruptions brought to life and study by Covid-19.
Under the modifications, all grades for undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses will be upscaled by one point. For example, if a student receives a “B” grade in a course, the final grade on the transcript will be recorded as “B+”.
However, this change will not be applied to postgraduate research courses because arrangements have already been made to provide fees-free time extensions.
In a staff email on Friday, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) John Morrow said these temporary changes recognise the disruptions caused to all students’ study in Semester One and aims to counteract academic disadvantage.
The University also announced in-campus exams will be replaced by online Final Assessments which students need to finish over a 24 hour period.
The Final Assessment for each course has been scheduled on a day between 18th June to 3rd July and they will start at 1pm New Zealand Standard Time (NZST) and finish at 12:59pm the following day.
There will be no time limits within the 24-hour period and the exam timetable has already been released.
AUSA President George Barton said the policy change is the result of a productive dialogue with the university and he is very pleased with the decision.
“This is a great win for students and the University working together.”
“Before our open letter was sent out, the University wasn’t even thinking about making any accommodation to students on account of the unprecedented disruption that this pandemic has caused.”
“Our open letter and the incredible student mandate we got for it from our survey and from the endorsement of our Faculty and Representative Associations got the University to consider this and work with us on a practical policy that we could all agree on.”
It is not known if this arrangement will be applied to full year papers, but AUSA said they will be having further discussion with the university on having this arrangement extended.