Department of Biology
University of Malta
MEMO
FROM: Tel: Fax: Email: TO: CC: SUBJECT: DATE: Dr Joseph A Borg Head of Department 23402850 21342488 joseph.a.borg@um.edu.mt BSc (Hons) Students (all years) Academic staff Submission of practical reports and assignments 7‐12‐12 With immediate effect, the procedure for submitting reports of practical sessions and/or field visits, and assignments is as follows: (i)
The official route of submission of all reports of practical sessions and/or field visits, and assignments will be through the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) available at https://accounts.um.edu.mt/sign‐in/go/auth/vle1213/. In this respect, students are requested to upload their work to the relative study unit page on the VLE. Each uploaded file should not be larger than 25MB. It is recommended that files be converted to pdf format and/or compressed to reduce file size when the 25MB limit is exceeded. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that the file is of a size that can be uploaded to the VLE. (ii)
In the case of drawings and other hand‐drawn/hand‐written work, these should be scanned and uploaded as for any other work produced in electronic format. (iii)
Uploading of assignments and practical reports to the VLE will be allowed past the stipulated deadline. However, marks will be deducted for late submissions. Deduction of marks will depend on the level of lateness of the submission. (iv)
Apart from uploading an electronic copy of their work to the VLE, students are also required to submit a hard copy to the departmental secretary as per usual practice. While it is encouraged to submit the hard copy by the stipulated deadline, this should reach the departmental secretary not later than 2 working days after the deadline for electronic submission has elapsed. (v)
(vi)
(vii)
(viii)
(ix)
In any case, students are to ensure that the hard copy is IDENTICAL to the digital version uploaded to the VLE. If any difference/s is/are noted between the 2 versions: (a) the demonstrator or tutor will ONLY consider the version that has been uploaded to the VLE; and (b) students may be penalized for differences between the 2 versions. The official date and time of submission of a practical/field visit report or assignment is that stipulated on the VLE. In case of queries concerning submission of reports of practical sessions and field visits, students should consult the respective Practical Demonstrators. In the case of queries concerning assignments, students should consult the respective Tutor. The above do not apply for reports that are completed in their entirety during a practical session and submitted at the end of the session. However, on the advice of the tutor, the Practical Demonstrator may require students to upload an electronic copy to the VLE for record purposes. Work submitted by students may be processed by the plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’. In this respect, students are allowed to scan a draft version of their assignment once through Turnitin before submitting the final assignment for assessment purposes. To enable this, the VLE will have two Turnitin upload areas for each assignment or practical/field visit report: 1. an upload area that will be marked ‘Draft’, which will allow students to submit their assignment or practical/field visit report once and have Turnitin generate an originality report. The originality report will highlight any text in the students' work found to be matching with other sources, along with links to the original sources where matched text was identified. This report may be viewed at any time by the students and the tutor/demonstrator. The draft assignment will not be used for assessment purposes. 2. An upload area that will be marked ‘Final Assignment’, which will allow students to submit their assignment for assessment purposes. The originality report generated for the final assignment will not be viewed by students. Students are therefore advised that, when in doubt as to whether their work contains plagiarized parts, they upload their work to the ‘Draft’ upload area prior to uploading to the ‘Final assessment’ area. It is the student’s responsibility to do this sufficiently before the submission deadline in time to receive the turnitin report and amend as necessary.