Assignments and Assessments

If you want to gain academic credit for this course module you will need to complete the assignments. Those successfully completing the assignments will receive a certificate of successful completion from the Peoples-uni. This may also be able to be used as evidence of prior learning by Universities and put towards one of their courses.

There are no exams, but each course module has 1 or 2 assignments. The assignments are designed to check that you have gained the competences which are identified at the start of each Topic. These competences are labelled as 'headline competences' - and under these we have identified the 'assessment criteria' which are the guide to the knowledge and skills which will be assessed in the assignments. There is only one final assignment for each course module as a whole (except for Biostatistics where there are two). They will all be posted by the start of Topic 4, although some are already there and some will appear sooner than Topic 4. They are designed to be completed at the end of the module, and there is a week after Topic 5 finishes to give time for this. The assignments will cover what is in the 'assessment criteria' in each Topic, but there is not a separate assignment in each Topic. There are also some Quizzes for you to check on your knowledge, but these are not for credit. For details of how to submit an assignment, see the next sections of the Handbook.

Re-submissions. We allow one re-submission of any assignment that has not met the criteria for a pass. If progress has been made between the original and the re-submission, but the criteria for a pass are still not met, we encourage a second re-submission. Feedback is give each time to help make the improvements. If a pass is still not achieved after a second re-submission, we either advise the student to re-enrol in the module (and do not make a charge for the re-enrollment), or we offer help through a one-on-one tutor to help improve the assignment for a later attempt (provided we have a tutor who is able to do this).

Timing of submissions. We do ask that you keep to the timetable for submission, which is posted on the assignment. If you want to request a delay, please ask the module leader. When you are asked to re-submit, the tutor will suggest a date that gives you time to make the changes. We do want to be flexible, but as the tutors are all volunteers and have other jobs, it is helpful to them if you can keep to the timetable suggested.

Please note that it is important to ensure that the assigment answers are your own work, and that we are relying on each student to make sure that the answer reflects your own competence and not that of someone else. While it is appropriate to include information you find on the Internet, the source of anything that is included in an assignment answer should be stated. So if you include a 'cut and paste' from the Internet as you have found something that is relevant to the answer, it is OK to do provided that this is acknowledged to be a cut and paste and that the source is noted. Pleasae make sure you read the section in this Handbook on Plagiarism at http://www.peoples-uni.org/book/plagiarism-copying-work-others-and-how-avoid-it