Master of Professional Psychology

Each subject has its hurdle requirements, refer to the Handbook for more information.
For the purposes of meeting this hurdle requirement, each submitted assessment must be complete and constitute a genuine attempt to address the marking criteria. Submitting only part of an assessment (e.g. only the title page) or an assessment on an irrelevant topic will not meet this hurdle requirement.

As per University policy, 50% is the mark required to PASS all University of Melbourne subjects (that have numerical marking).

Within our postgraduate psychology programs, while 50% is a passing mark required for each subject, we take note of any student who records a mark between below 70 for a subject and consider whether any additional feedback or support is warranted.  This is an  informal process and can only be offered as guidance for the student, not linked with course outcomes.

It is your responsibility to get in contact with the subject coordinator and arrange to do an alternative assignment for any assignment that you have previously submitted, regardless of whether or not you received feedback on that assignment. You must do this by the end of Week 3.

Failure to notify the subject coordinator in a timely fashion will not be considered grounds for an extension.

More information on repeating a subject available here.

All subject examinations will be held during the University examination period at the end of the semester in which the subject is held. You must plan to be available during the entire examination period (including the special and supplementary period), as the exam timetable is subject to change. It is your responsibility to find out the correct information regarding the time, date and location of your examinations – more information available here.

You must:

• Submit via Turnitin as per the instructions given by the Subject Coordinator
• Type and double space all assignments
• Include your name, student number and an accurate word count on the title page.
• Save your file in the format LAST NAME (UPPERCASE)_Student Number_Subject Number_Assignment Number e.g. SMITH_12345_PSYC10001_Assignment1
• Ensure you have backup copies of your work.

You must not:

• Submit assignments via fax or emails
• Submit assignments to tutors’ or academics’ pigeonholes
• Submit assignments to the Psychology Office staff or
• Submit assignments under doors

Please submit to the correct LMS folder. Thus, if you have received an extension, you must submit to the folder for extensions. Please do not submit to multiple folders as this may result in the wrong version of your work being marked. If you happen to submit to the incorrect folder, please submit to the correct folder and inform the subject coordinator that you have also submitted to the incorrect folder so he/she can ensure that the correct version of your assignment is marked.

For assignments submitted after the due date without an approved extension, the mark awarded will be reduced by 10% of the total marks available for each University working day the work is late. Thus, if the assignment was due at 8 am on Monday but was submitted after this time but by 7:59 am on Tuesday, it would receive a 10% late penalty.

Conversely, if the assignment was due at 8 am on Friday but handed in after this time but by 7:59 am on the following Monday, it would still count as just one day late as Saturday and Sunday are not working days.

The above reasoning assumed that Monday was a regular working day. However, if the Monday was a University holiday then it would also not count as a working day. In this case, if the assignment were handed in by 7:59 am on the Tuesday it would still count as only one day late.

Assignments submitted more than 5 working days after the due date without an approved extension will not be marked and will receive no marks.

Students are provided with a word limit for written assessments to promote the development of writing skills based on precise reasoning and carefully worded arguments.

In recognition that the ability to formulate a concise argument is an important marker of academic scholarship, 10% of the total marks available for a given assessment task will be deducted for every 10% that the word count exceeds the word limit specified for the task.

Example: For an assessment task with a specified word limit of 1000 words marked out of 100:

• there will be no penalty for assignments with a word count up to 1099 words;
• a penalty of 10 marks will be applied to assignments with a word count between 1100 and 1199 words;
• a penalty of 20 marks will be applied to assignments with a word count between 1200 and 1299 words; etc.

Students are required to report the word count accurately on the front page of each piece of work submitted for assessment, with incorrect reporting potentially liable to an allegation of academic misconduct on the grounds of providing false or misleading information.

The word count should include all text in the body of the work (including in-text citations), but excluding all words in the title, abstract, headings, tables, figures, captions for tables and figures, references, and appendices. Different software packages may count the words differently. We will consider the word count from the MS Word (English PC) version to be definitive.

The word count penalty will be capped at 50%. Thus, for an assessment task with a word limit of 1000 words worth 100 marks, if a student were to submit an assignment that was 1700 words long, 50 marks would be deducted as the word count penalty.

Your subject coordinator may opt to make available to you a tool called PeerWise. This is entirely at the subject coordinator’s discretion and will typically be done only for a large subject whose final exam contains a significant multiple choice questions component. PeerWise is an independent website that allows students to create, share and answer multiple choice questions authored by other students. In this way it allows students to revise subject-specific content in a collaborative and supportive environment. If your subject coordinator has opted to make PeerWise available for your subject, please see the following link for detailed instructions on how to use this tool:

https://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/docs/

All written assignments will be marked against the marking criteria that were provided by the academic member of staff who set the assignment. Markers will provide detailed comments against the marking criteria to justify the grade assigned. Assignments deemed not to be of a passing standard will be double marked. If you did not receive detailed comments or do not agree with the comments that you received, you may follow the remarking procedure outlined below.

Our remarking procedure follows that outlined in the University’s Assessment and Results Policy. Students are not automatically entitled to have their result reviewed or their work marked by a different marker. Requests for a remark will be assessed on an individual basis. Before formally requesting a remark you must first meet with your tutor to discuss the feedback you received. Requests to meet with your tutor must be made within 3 business days of receiving the initial feedback and formal requests for a remark must be made within 10 business days of receiving the initial feedback. The procedure is as follows:

1. If you believe that the comments you received are not sufficiently detailed or the grade you have received is not adequately justified against the marking criteria then you should first contact your marker to discuss this. The request to meet with your marker must be made in writing via email. In particular, you should not approach your tutor before, during, or after a tutorial to discuss remarking. Your request must not be made until one business day has passed from receiving the initial feedback and grade to ensure adequate time to consider the feedback. The request to meet with your tutor must be made within three business days of receiving the initial feedback.
2. Once a request to review an assignment has been received, the marker will contact you to arrange a time to meet. This meeting should occur within 8 business days of you receiving the initial feedback. If you cannot arrange this meeting within that timeframe, you should inform the Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning, Dr Jason Forte (jdf@unimelb.edu.au), immediately. You should bring the marked assignment and a copy of the marking criteria to the meeting with your tutor.
3. At the meeting, the marker will discuss the feedback and grade against the criteria. The marker will not provide you with a numerical breakdown of marks for each section of the report, but will discuss each section qualitatively against the criteria. No change to the original grade will be discussed at this meeting.
4. If you are not satisfied with the feedback provided at the meeting and still believe that there has been an error of academic judgment in the application of the marking criteria, then you may request a formal remark by emailing the Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning,  within 10 business days of having received the initial feedback on the assignment. Late requests will only be accommodated under exceptional circumstances.
5. Applications for remarking must include the following:
   • Student ID
   • Subject code and name
   • Name of the subject coordinator
   • Name and email address of the marker
   • The date the initial feedback was provided
   • The exact numerical mark you received
   • Copy of the marked assignment which includes all of the in-text comments provided by your tutor as well as all of the comments at the end. The pdf with the in-text comments can be downloaded using the instructions here.
     If the comments at the end are not included, you can provide them as a screenshot or by copy-pasting them into a separate document.
   • If your request for a remark occurs later than 10 business days after you received the initial feedback you need to explain why. Late requests will be considered only under exceptional circumstances. Such a request must state 1) the date the tutor was initially emailed requesting the meeting, 2) the date the meeting occurred, and 3) why your remark request is late.
   • Your remark request must clearly state which of the official marking criteria you believe were not appropriately followed by the marker. Subjective disagreements with the judgment of the marker are not grounds for a remark.
   • You must include a clean copy of the assessment with identifying information removed.
   • You must also include the full marking criteria and all of the assignment instructions.
6. The Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning will decide whether there are sufficient grounds for remarking the assessment and will contact you within a week with their decision.
7. If a remark occurs, the entire assignment will be remarked. It is not possible to request that only certain sections of the assignment be remarked.
8. The re-marker will provide a justification of their grade against the original marking criteria.
9. The re-marked result will be the final result for the assessment task regardless of whether it is higher or lower than the original result. No further change can be made the grade unless there are grounds to review the process of re-marking.

The Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences requires students to adopt the American Psychological Association (APA) format for acknowledging the work of others through in-text citations and referencing. The APA provides some excellent resources for learning APA style http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx

The following website is also a good resource for the correct application of APA style for both in-text references and your reference list:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/

More information is available here.

Plagiarism is the act of representing the creative work of another as one's own original work, without appropriate acknowledgment of the author or source. The following are examples of plagiarism if appropriate acknowledgement or referencing of the author or source does not occur:

• Copying directly (or allowing to be copied) paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence. An end reference without quotation marks around the copied text may also constitute plagiarism
• Copying ideas, concepts, research results, statistical tables, computer programs, designs, images, sounds or text, or any combination of these
• Paraphrasing of another's work closely, with minor changes but with the essential meaning, form, and/or progression of ideas maintained
• Relying on a specific idea or interpretation that is not one's own without identifying whose idea or interpretation it is
• Cutting or pasting statements from multiple sources or piecing together work of others and representing them as original work
• Presenting as independent, work done in collaboration with other people (e.g., another student, a tutor)
• Submitting, as one's own, all or part of another student's original work
• Resubmitting your own work for more than one assessment, except where explicitly authorised to do so.
• Preparing an original and correctly referenced assignment and submitting part or all of the assignment twice for separate subjects or marks
• Cheating in an exam, either by copying from other students or by using unauthorised notes or aids.

For the university’s advice on academic integrity and plagiarism please see here.

For advice from the University’s academic skills unit please see here.

Because this issue is so important, we have created a short video to remind students of the different forms of plagiarism. IT IS CRUCIAL THAT YOU WATCH THIS VIDEO BEFORE SUBMITTING ANY ASSIGNMENTS. See here.

Collusion is the presentation by a student of an assignment as his or her own which is in fact the result in whole or in part of unauthorised collaboration with another person or persons. Collusion involves the cooperation of two or more students in plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct. Both the student presenting the assignment and the student(s) willingly supplying unauthorised material (colluders) are considered participants in the act of academic misconduct. Whilst discussion amongst students is encouraged, it is expected that the written submission be planned and completed by each student independently, except when a group assignment is required.

The potential penalties for plagiarism and collusion are severe and can include receiving a zero for the assignment or even the entire subject. If there are two or more pieces of work from different students that cannot be differentiated, all students involved may be penalised.