Your Progress

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Understanding the importance of your assessments

Remember your main objective for your enrolment is to demonstrate knowledge, understanding and competency. The main method to achieve this is to participate in fair assessment activities. You need to take your assessments seriously with care, adopting ownership and responsibility. Do not submit work which is below course expectations deliberately. This is just wasting your time. Remember what counts is the quality of the evidence not submitting work. There are no merit for submitting work. Your assessor is also not a magician and does not have any power to transform your work. Your work will be assessed for its merit.

All assessments will be accompanied by feedback. It is your responsibility to ensure that you fully embrace your feedback starting with the areas you have done well and addressing any areas of development. You should seek further clarification from your assessor if any of the feedback, actions or tasks are not clear.

You should follow all guidance from your assessor regarding the quality of your evidence. It is also compulsory to follow all standardised procedures in place including using the unit coursework templates, submitting any supporting evidence as an appendix to avoid any delays with your course completion and certification. Please refer below to further information regarding your assessments.

How is my course assessed?

Your course is assessed by a portfolio of evidence which has to be submitted electronically for both internal and external quality assurance.

It is your responsibility to ensure that all your evidence meets course requirements. You therefore should follow all standardised procedures and guidance from your assessor including making sure all your evidence is signed and dated.

Standardised Coursework Templates
You will need to use the Coursework templates provided when completing any of the assignments and tasks. These templates can be downloaded under “Coursework”. You should also be able to download the reflective accounts and work diary templates from the same location.

Presentation of your Coursework
Use the Arial font, size 11 and 1.5 spacing. Ensure you type in your name, identify your assessor and course, date and sign before submitting your work through Exchange.

Word Limit
Where there is a word count you can submit your work with a range plus or minus 200 words? Please ensure you state the number of words you have used at the end of the assignment! References are not counted.

Assignment Drafts
Assignment drafts are not appropriate for this level of study. Any work submitted as a draft will be assessed as a final submission.

Volume of Coursework
You should not exceed the agreed volume of coursework that can be submitted on a monthly basis without the consent of your assessor. Any substantial work submitted will be assessed inline with our normal timescales and procedures. There is a risk of substantial work being referred if it is not correct. This might affect your motivation. If you also exceed your course duration due to having actions that resulted after you had submitted substantial work last minute charges will apply. You are advised to, therefore, submit your work as you go along as this will also enable you demonstrate learning over a period of time.

Pitching your Coursework
You need to use reflective writing to avoid being asked to complete separate reflective accounts. Your work should be full of examples from your work that demonstrates practice. You will be expected to evidence that you have carried out some research by including references from a number of sources. Your work should also demonstrate the ability to analyse, and link to theory and regulations. Your ideas should ideally be supported by evidence-based practice to reflect the level of study. Even when asked to explain you should be able to analyse and examine the assignment question from different perspectives.

Please pay due diligence to the quality of your work, Never assume the reader knows what you are discussing. You have to fully explain everything and should avoid bullet points and listing unless you are requested to do so. Please avoid waffling and respond to the assessment task directly to avoid losing focus on the requirements of the task. You have to make everything clear and ensure you have responded to all parts of the assessment task! Although this course is assessed by a range of methods certain assessments such as witness testimonies and professional discussions are only used to fill gaps and to reinforce your natural evidence. Please do not expect your main source of evidence to be made up of witness statements and professional discussions!

Supporting Evidence
You need to ensure you correctly signpost or refer to your supporting evidence for each of the assessment criteria requiring you to demonstrate competency or practice. All supporting evidence should be clearly labelled and submitted as an appendix. Please do not duplicate your labelling for the appendix. Each labelling of supporting evidence should be cumulative and unique. For example, there should only be one appendix 1 for the whole course.

Videos and Audio Files
All video evidence should be submitted as mp4 files. All audio files should be submitted as mp3. Ensure any video evidence submitted clearly shows all participants and demonstrates all your interactions. The video should be an mp4 as advised above.

Assessment Strategy
The assessment strategy for all course tasks is for you to have up to three attempts to meet the assessment criteria. Your assessor will ask you to highlight your work in Green to indicate this is a second attempt. You will be asked to highlight your work in Blue to indicate this is your third attempt. If you have not managed to fully address the assessment criteria after three attempts this might indicate you are struggling. Your work will then be referred to our quality assurance team. Reference to our equality polices, procedures, reasonable adjustment, candidate/learner charter and conduct on the course will be considered before any further intervention.

Harvard Referencing
Harvard Referencing should always be used. Please do not include any graphs or images within the body of the coursework? You can include these as part of your bibliography after the references.

Feedback Turn Around
There is currently a 14 working days feedback turnaround period for all coursework. Assessors will aim to get back to you earlier, as soon as they can sometimes within a few days. The 14 days are counted from your course dedicated day and exclude Saturday, Sunday and Bank holidays. The time period is extended if you submit substantial work without approval and can be up to 8 weeks.

In this case, our 14 working days feedback time scale does not apply as we might need to verify the authenticity of your work. This might require referring your work to our quality assurance team or making checks with external sources. You, therefore, need to ensure you participate in course activities over a period of time as you progress.

Quality Assurance Results
Quality assurance can take up to two weeks depending on your course, the volume of work and the quality of your portfolio of evidence. Your assessor will let you know the outcome of quality assurance. Our admin sometimes shares this information on behalf of assessors when requested to do so.

No quality assurance results will be shared with you over the phone to avoid any confusion. Please do not ask or expect to speak with the internal quality assurer or manager directly about your results. Quality assurance results are only passed to you as a written record and will clearly state if any actions apply or not. Where there are actions it is your responsibility to address them within the deadlines set by your assessor.

Please refer to other topics regarding the “Quality of your evidence”, “Presentation of your work”, “Plagiarism” and “Principles of assessments” which all have an influence on your assessments.