Teachers' Guide | Graduate School of Life Sciences

Assessment

In the teaching phase, the course will be taught by the course coordinator or a colleague teacher. The course coordinator has to be available during the course as a contact person for the students.

A course is assessed by the examiner: a staff member of the UU or UMCU with a teaching qualification. Often the course coordinators themselves are the examiners. More information about assessment can be found in the Education and Examination Regulations. For questions or advice regarding assessment, please contact the Assessment Support Panel.

Examiners must assign a grade for an oral test either immediately or within 24 hours after its completion. For a written test, the assessment must be recorded within 10 working days from the day the test was taken.

Feedback on marked work

Upon request, students have the right to inspect their marked work for a period of 20 working days after the announcement of the results. Please proactively notify the students that inspection of their work is possible. Organising a set moment in which students can walk-in and view their marked work is an option and this can be organised both on location or online. Alternatively, you can also schedule individual appointments with students. 

Please try to provide comprehensive feedback on students’ assignments and when applicable an answering model. Including general (or individual) feedback in an e-mail together with the grading can also be a time-saving option. Students have expressed a desire for feedback on their work, as it helps them identify areas of improvement and enhances their learning process.

Students with extra time

During your exam there might be students that are entitled to extra time. To qualify for this, students need to have a contract issued by the academic counsellor. Students that are entitled to extra time can be viewed in OSIRIS Supervisor. GSLS students always receive a copy of the contract so in case the course examiner has no access to OSIRIS Supervisor, students can be asked to provide their contract directly. 

Students outside of the GSLS may not have a received a contract. In this case OSIRIS Supervisor needs to be used to determine whether the student qualifies. If you have no access to OSIRIS Supervisor the academic counsellor can perform this check.

Digital assessment (anonymous grading / online proctoring)

Courses can make use of digital assessment in case of written exams. Digital assessment can improve the quality of your exams, allow you to use your time more effectively and efficiently, and remove possible bias in the grading procedure (see anonymous grading below). For digital assessment the UMCU makes use of TestVision and the UU makes use of Remindo. Digital assessment can be used for both formative and summative assessment.

For Biomedical Sciences teachers, more information about the opportunities for digital assessment in TestVision is available online (in Dutch) or you can contact doo-testvision@umcutrecht.nl.

For Biosciences teachers, more information about digital assessment in Remindo is available.

Anonymous grading

The GSLS makes use of anonymous grading for all exams taken in Remindo and TestVision. Anonymous grading means that during the grading of open questions, the grader will be unable to identify the student. This will result in a more unbiased grading procedure. The grader will be able to choose to grade per question or per student, as per usual. Once the grading process is finished the grader can still see which student gave which answer.

Anonymous grading can be turned off upon request by contacting the policy team of BMS (for Biomedical Sciences teachers) or the policy team of Biosciences (for Biosciences teachers).

Online proctoring

When making use of digital assessment, online proctoring can be requested as a special provision, in case of force majeure.

More information

Want to know more about (digital) assessment? Have a look at one of the following links: