MySIS Extenuating Circumstances Student Guide: Registering Claims for Assessments, Slides of School management&administration

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Extenuating

Circumstances

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

EXTENUATING

CIRCUMSTANCES

STUDENT GUIDE

Contents

• 1 Introduction ......................................................................................
  • 1.1 Terminology ..................................................................................
  • 1.2 Access ..........................................................................................
• 2 Submission Process ........................................................................
• 3 Screening and Approval

2 Submission Process

In the majority of instances, EC claims should be made by students themselves, but it is possible for your home department to create a claim on your behalf if necessary. This should only ever be done on your request and based on evidence/self-certification details that you have provided. As an alternative to providing evidence relating to a claim, each student is entitled to submit up to three self-certified claims per academic year (NB – each individual claim can relate to multiple assessments/modules), which involves providing details of the extenuating circumstances without the provision of additional evidence. Acceptance of such claims still falls to your academic department/EC sub-board. If you have previously submitted one or more self-certification claims during the current academic year, a reminder message will appear in the Log a New Claim section showing how many such claims have been submitted out of a maximum of three. If three claims have already been made, the task will automatically block any more self-certification claims being submitted. To add a claim, log in to your MySIS account and click on Extenuating Circumstances in the menu bar at the top of the screen. This will bring up a summary showing your personal details, details of your programme and various headings denoting different stages of the claim process: If you already have claims that are awaiting submission, submitted and currently being considered, completed, deleted, awaiting evidence or which have had a provisional decision applied, the headings at the bottom will display a number alongside them denoting how many of each you have. These can be viewed and accessed by clicking on the individual headings. To add a new claim, click on the New Claim button, which will open up the following screen:

This first step, Guidance/Type, provides links to resources for advice and guidance on completing a claim. Using the first dropdown, you are required to declare whether you have sought guidance or not by selecting the appropriate answer. In instances where you select ‘No, I have not yet sought guidance’, the following message will appear when the Next button is clicked to reiterate the importance of appropriate guidance: This message only serves as a warning; you are still permitted to continue with the claim if you have not sought guidance. The second dropdown allows you to select the claim type – ‘Standard Claim’ or ‘Self- Certification’. NB – If you proceed beyond this stage, the claim type cannot be amended; if the incorrect type was selected, a new claim would need to be created and the incorrect claim deleted. When you have completed these two actions, clicking on Next moves the task on to the second step:

This page lists the modules you are able to register a claim for (i.e. modules that have not yet been confirmed as completed and closed down), along with a summary of the number of assessments within those modules that already have claims registered against them. Clicking on Select Assessments next to the appropriate module will open up a list of that module’s assessments: If the assessment is a re-assessment – i.e. the assessment was previously failed or missed and is being taken/submitted again – an ‘R’ will appear next to the sequence number and the background will appear as blue: Any assessment being linked to the claim needs selecting using the check box on the left of the screen, after which an Impact type needs selecting from the dropdown list – ‘Non Attendance’, ‘Non Submission’, ‘Late Submission’, ‘Need Extension’ (this last option is only available to certain schools) – and the date of the assessment needs entering. Students who have selected ‘Late Submission’ as the Impact type should enter the date of the original submission deadline in the Assessment/Exam date column and the actual submission date in the Requested Extension Date/Late Submission Date column. Students who have selected ‘Need Extension’ as the Impact type should enter the date of the original submission deadline in the Assessment/Exam date column and the preferred new date in the Requested Extension Date/Late Submission Date column. Along with ‘Non Submission', neither option is applicable to examinations. Clicking on Add To Claim will add the selected assessments to the claim. NB – In instances where you attended an examination but subsequently left due to your stated extenuating circumstance, ‘Non Attendance’ should be selected as the Impact option. Once that step has been completed, the summary column will update to show the current number of assessments linked to the claim. When all affected assessments from the list of

modules have been added, clicking on Next will bring up a full list of all assessments now attached to your claim: As well as providing a summary of the assessments, this page allows for additional information to be added. Assessments within some schools are broken down further into elements that are not reflected on the system – e.g. 10 week tutorials that are assessed as 10 individual elements – so these additional information fields allow you to flag up if only specific parts of the assessment were affected. However, given that this scenario is not applicable to all assessments, it is not a requirement to enter any text into the additional information fields in order to proceed. If you are happy with the information displayed in the summary and have entered any required additional information, clicking on Next advances the task to the fourth step. If the claim type is ‘Self-Certification’, the following screen will appear: In order to proceed, you will need to check the tick box to confirm you are self-certifying the extenuating circumstances for this claim, then click on Next. If the claim type is ‘Standard Claim’, then the following screen will appear:

In instances where evidence is being provided, documentation is uploaded via the Select Files button, which opens up an upload screen that allows for as many files as necessary to be attached to the claim. Any evidence provided needs to be uploaded in one of the following file formats - DOC, DOCX, JPEG, JPG, PDF, PNG, TIF, TIFF. When all required files have been uploaded and the upload screen has been closed, a list of the uploaded files will appear, from which each file can either be viewed or removed from the claim. Once you are satisfied that all necessary evidence has been attached to the claim, clicking on Next will advance the task to the final step: This step provides a full summary of your claim and allows access to each of the previous sections for any necessary amendments. At the bottom of the screen is a declaration tick box, which must be ticked in order to proceed. Once you are satisfied that the claim is complete, clicking on Submit will advance the claim to the departmental screening process. Upon successful submission of a claim, the claim reference number will appear on screen with confirmation that the claim has been submitted, along with an explanation that details of the claim have been sent to your QMUL email address. You will be able to track the progress of the claim and view a record of the email via the main Extenuating Circumstances page by clicking on Claims Under Consideration; the full details of the claim can then be displayed by clicking on View. Any claims that have been started but are no longer needed should be deleted, so that your department are aware those claims are not pending submission.

3 Screening and Approval

The role of making a final decision on whether a claim is accepted or not falls to your home school, i.e. the school responsible for the programme you are enrolled on. In the majority of instances, the school responsible for the module being claimed against and your home school will be the same. There will, however, be instances where the two are separate schools, in which case the module owning school will assess the claim first and pass their comments on to your home school who will then confirm the claim for EC sub-board consideration. (The exception to this is if you are an Associate student, in which case the claim is dealt with exclusively by the module owning school.) If your department require additional information or evidence, they will return the claim to you with an explanation of what they need and you will receive an email instructing you to check your Extenuating Circumstances page where a ‘Claims Requiring Further Information’ section will have appeared. This will display details of the department’s request, along with a link to a reply screen that allows you to send further information or upload additional evidence as required. The standard deadline for submitting a claim is three working days prior to the relevant EC sub-board meeting, though in some instances deadline dates vary between schools/institutes, so please ensure that you consult with your home school. For the majority of EC claims, a final decision is made by the EC sub-board, though occasionally they may find it necessary to forward a claim to the SEB. Once a final decision has been applied to a claim – or if the EC sub-board apply a provisional decision pending a final decision – the details will be sent to you via email to your QMUL email address.