CRIM 305

We, the students of the Criminology course CRIM 305: Research Methodology note the following regarding the test set by Prof. J. Steyn written by us on 09 May 2013:

1. Professor Steyn was not present at the test to answer any questions that we may have had at the time.

2. Instructions given to us by Professor Steyn before the test were not clear and precise, we were not instructed or advised that in some cases we should/could choose more than one answer. In his example on the test only one answer was chosen. When we informed the invigilators/tutors that more than one answer on the paper could have been correct we were instructed to choose the most correct answer and thus we were unaware that we must choose more than one option in order to get the question right.

3. There was ambiguity and lack of consensus on the answers.

4. When our class representative addressed Professor Steyn with our grievances, she was informed that since the test was both internally and externally moderated there was nothing we could do. We find this to be an unsatisfactory response.

5. The marking scheme was unfair. All questions were worth 2 marks regardless of how many answers there were, some answers deserved more marks than were given and in cases where we had chosen some of the correct options we were given no marks at all, we fail to see the reason to allocate 2 marks to each question if we cannot at least get 1.

 

We hereby resolve that either the test should be remarked taking into consideration the circumstances under which we wrote it OR to use the best mark for each student as the Class/DP mark.

 

P.S. Please use your UKZN email address when signing the petition.