A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
The results were published unexpectedly early, and coincidentally on the same day as the students’ Macroeconomics II exam.
Following the Nouse article regarding the Microeconomics II results, which noted that the economics department had been ordered to investigate its exam procedure after over 50% of the students assessed achieved a first-class grade, results have varied significantly.
The average mark has fallen by 17% compared to last year: a signficant decrease considering the format of the exam remained unchanged. With the highest score of 78% in a multiple choice exam, only 22 students came out with a first, whilst six students received a failed mark.
Students are outraged at the possibility that the department has moved the bell curve down by at least 20 marks.
A second-year PEP student told The Yorker: “I took my question paper out and I had circled the answers on them. A friend checked my answers and calculated that I would get a first, but obviously, I had not. This is ridiculous.”
Other students were unhappy at the timing of the published results, having seen the results just before sitting their Macroeconomics II exam. Another student told The Yorker: "Whether it was published in spite or a genuine error on the department's part, no one knows, but whatever the reason is, it has affected many of us during the Macroeconomics exam."
The Board of Studies representatives for Economics and for the Microeconomics II module have been in touch with YUSU Academic and Welfare Officer Charlie Leyland to look into the options that are available to change the current situation.
The student representatives formed a petition beginning yesterday evening in which they hope to get 200 signatures appealing the situation. The petition will continue throughout the rest of the day.
With the head of departments and chairs of the Board of Studies for PEP and Economics informed of the situation, the Economics department took quick action. An email was sent out to all the Microeconomics II students, claiming that no marks have been capped, and that the reason for the unexpectedly poor results were due to a discrepancy between "examiners' and students' understanding of what would constitute good answers to the short questions".
The results have now been withdrawn, and the department will be consulting the external examiner again to review the answers. They are hoping to rectify the situation as soon as possible.
I might be missing out on something here, this article doesn't exactly explain what the hell is going on. Did Nouse publish an article that made the economics lecturers make the exam harder, or changed the results or what?
Are people basically angry because they didn't get as many marks as they hoped?
"only 22 students came out with a first", out of how many? To me, 22 sounds like a lot, especially when you compare it to compulsory modules in Computer Science, some of which had a 50% failure rate with an average of 40%, and one this year actually had an unanswerable question on it.
This story might make perfect sense if you're an economics student, but I have absolutely no idea what its point is.
I don't know of any computer science modules with an average of 40%. Plus, I am pretty sure that taken as a percentage, 22 firsts in economics are fewer than the firsts in computer science (at least for some modules).
The point, simply put, is that economics students expected much better results than these.
A.
The Economics department need to get their act together. This is at least the fourth consecutive year that there has been major things wrong with their examinations!
Well to answer you, there were more than 230 students who sat for the exam, of which only 22 got firsts, which is less than 10% of the students, compared to last year when over 60% of the students had firsts and 2:1's, and as Aris says, it's not about the number of firsts, it's that the students expected to do a lot better on that considering they were given the guidelines to how to answer the short answer questions.
Aris, the average for my year in LPA was 40% with most of the year failing - hence the shakeup of assessments and the introduction of miniexams for your year and beyond. I assume that's the module anon #1 is referring to.
#4: what percentage had Firsts and 2:1's this year? 60% in Firsts/2:1's to less than 10% Firsts is hardly a useful comparison.
Ah, ok Chris, I did not realise. I thought he/she was referring to MSD, which had an average of 48 in my year.
A.
On the other hand, the average score two years ago was about 50%, then in the mid-60s last year, despite the format being the same. Didn't hear any complaints then.
I think MSD had an average of 44%.
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