Uni rocked by marking fiasco

From:

By Tess Livingstone

February 21, 2006

Rohan Duggan / James Robertson

Rohan Duggan … left his university in frustration / James Robertson

A UNIVERSITY graduate student abandoned the institution in frustration after a marking fiasco during which a lecturer told him to produce “more smarter writing”.

Former Queensland University of Technology Master of Business Marketing student Rohan Duggan, 38, said his nine-month ordeal included seven meetings and hundreds of pages of correspondence, some farcical.The original marking of a 2000-word paper included a comment from lecturer Edwina Luck advising Mr Duggan to present “more smarter writing”.
Exams: What you said about uni marking

After Ms Luck graded the paper at 65 per cent, Mr Duggan questioned the grade and Ms Luck passed it to another staffer, Dr Yunus Ali, who downgraded it to 35 per cent.

In re-marking, Dr Ali questioned the use of the terms “Yin” and “Yang”, a Chinese concept of balance, and said they should have been listed as references in the bibliography (a list of the books used as reference material).

Yesterday, Dr Ali admitted he had “no idea” what the terms meant and thought they were references to people’s names.

“We don’t go into the deeper meaning,” he said.

In response to further queries, Ms Luck sent Mr Duggan a short e-mail which, because her “s” key was not functioning, read as: “I knew you would be di appointed, o what I have done i taken the middle ground. I am uppo ed to take the econd mark, but I did not want to kill you that much. I do hope that you have learned from thi . Not the point of a king for explanation, but that we a lecturer are not totally illy!! Academic writing i difficult. I hope all our comment can be helpful in the future. Edwina.”

Mr Duggan then took his complaint to higher authorities and his original mark was restored.

Mr Duggan said the restored mark helped him achieve a distinction in the subject, although when he learned that Dr Ali would have been teaching him in second year he decided to go elsewhere and has now completed a Master of Marketing Managing degree at Griffith University.

QUT registrar Dr Carol Dickenson and Business Dean Professor Peter Little said that both Ms Luck and Dr Ali had been reprimanded and made to attend a seminar on Learning and Teaching Issues.

They agreed their conduct was “obviously unacceptable”.

Professor Little said if due process had been applied, Ms Luck would have given the assignment to her (Luck’s) head of department who would have selected a staff member himself to do the re-marking.

He insisted Dr Ali was “very well qualified academically”.