Assessment and Feedback

Formative assessment develops the knowledge and skills that you acquire from your courses. Formative assessment is a compulsory part of every course and may include class/seminar discussions and presentations; essays; problem sets; research proposals, mock examinations or quizzes. Formative assessment does not count towards your course mark or your overall degree classification. Instead, it is is designed to prepare you for the summative (assessed) work that you will complete later in the course. The feedback you receive from your formative work will help prepare you for your summative work.

We have set formative deadlines for the core courses which all our MSc students take:

For all other formative assignments in the department, you should check the deadline with your course convenor or seminar leader. Feedback on formative tasks will normally be returned to students within three term weeks of the submission deadline, where students submit their work on time.

Summative assessment tests whether you have acquired the learning outcomes of each course. Summative assessment is a compulsory part of every course and may include a variety of methods including coursework (such as essays), closed book and take-home assessments, presentations and dissertations. Summative assessment does count towards your course mark course and your overall degree classification. Individual courses may be assessed by one piece of summative assessment or by a combination of different types of summative assessment.

The below table lists the summative assessment deadlines for master's courses in the department in the academic year 2023/24. Feedback on summative tasks will normally be returned to students within five term weeks of the submission deadline, where students submit their work on time. All feedback deadlines comply with the LSE Academic Code.

When writing assignments, students must adhere to the stated word limit. However, the Department of Media and Communications allows a 10% margin of error on word count, meaning students can write 10% over or under the stated word limit, unless specific course assignment guidelines state otherwise. For example, for an assignment of 3000 words, students should aim to submit no more than 3300 words and no fewer than 2700 words.

The word count must be recorded on the coversheet, which you must attach to the first page of your submission. Where the word count of an assignment is considerably over or under the limit (i.e., more than 10%) this will be taken into consideration during the marking process.

For all formative and summative coursework submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, including the dissertation, the word count will include:

• the main body of the text 
• titles, headings and subheadings
• abstracts
• directly quoted material
• footnotes and endnotes used to provide additional information to supplement the main body of the text

 The word count will not include:

• in-text (bracketed) citations, as used in referencing systems such as Harvard, APA, MLA and the Chicago/Turabian 'author-date' style
• footnote or endnote citations, as used in referencing systems such as Oxford and the Chicago/Turabian 'notes and bibliography' style
• the coversheet
• the Generative AI statement
• letters of notification (only used by students with My Adjustments)
• tables of content
• acknowledgements and dedications
• graphs, figures, tables, images, and captions referring to these
• appendices
• bibliographies and reference lists

Written coursework submitted to other academic departments may have different word count rules, so please check before submitting work if this applies to you.

If you have a summative assessment and you are worried that you will not meet the deadline, you should request either an Extension or a Deferral (see the 'Extensions, Deferrals and Exceptional Circumstances' section at the bottom of this page). If you don’t successfully request either of these, and you submit your work late, the penalties will be as follows:

• Coursework (including essays, projects and dissertations)
  Five marks will be deducted for coursework submitted within 24 hours after the deadline. A further five marks will be deducted for each subsequent 24 hour period (this includes weekends, public holidays and School closure days) until the coursework is submitted. Coursework more than five days late will only be accepted with the permission of the Chair of the Sub-Board of Examiners.
• 7-Day take-home assessments
  Within the first 24 hours after the assessment submission deadline, five marks will be deducted for every half-day (12 hours), or part of a half day the assessment is received late. This will result in a maximum penalty of ten percentage marks for the first 24 hours. For beyond the first 24 hours after assessment submission deadline, ten marks will be deducted for the first 24 hours as above then five percentage marks will be deducted per 24 hour period (not limited to working days) the assessment is late, or 24 hour period, thereafter.

If you do submit an assessment late, then it is important that you submit an Exceptional Circumstances form (see the 'Extensions, Deferrals and Exceptional Circumstances' section at the bottom of this page), which allows the Department to consider any circumstances you were experiencing at the time which may have affected your ability to submit work by the deadline. 

All summative coursework in the Department is marked using a system called ‘moderation’. Moderation is an established and widely used system of marking in UK academia. Moderation aims to assure that assessments have been marked in an academically rigourous manner, fairly, with consistency, and with reference to agreed marking criteria. Initially, the first marker, who is either the teacher responsible for the course or a member of academic staff who has experience in the subject matter to the satisfaction of the Exam Sub-Board Chair, marks the pieces of work and writes notes justifying these marks. All courses are then moderated by a moderator, who is a member of full-time faculty. The role of the moderator is to review and verify marks and to oversee the consistency of marking in line with assessment criteria, the course aims, and the expected learning outcomes. The moderator performs this role through a review of the overall mark distribution and the reading of an appropriate sample of assessments.  In the unusual situation where marks cannot be confirmed, the first marker refers the marking outcome to the Exam Sub-Board Chair who will decide on what action, if any, is required, and whose decision will be final with respect to the internal marking procedure.

In the case of in-class work which is non-textual (e.g. presentations), an appropriate system of moderation is put in place to enable consistency and rigour in marking. This could be through joint observation of presentations and/or review of presentation reports. 

All dissertations are independently double-blind marked i.e. each marker marks the dissertation without having sight of the other marker’s mark or comments during the process. In the case of dissertations, one of the two markers, normally your supervisor, is assigned the role of ‘first marker’ and is responsible for arranging a meeting between both markers to discuss and agree upon a provisional mark for the dissertation.

Policy on Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

In the Department of Media and Communications, our priority is to ensure the integrity of students’ learning, assessment and achievement. We recognise the use of generative AI ools is widespread, but we both encourage and expect students to be discerning in their use of these tools. They should support, but not replace, students’ own intellectual effort both in class and in assessments.

This policy constitutes the Department-wide policy for AI. Individual courses that you take, within or outside the Department, may have different policies that are more or less open. The course policy takes priority if this is the case, so please ensure you are aware of what your courses permit.

Please note that students' use of generative AI tools is done at their own risk; these tools are not perfect and may produce incorrect or nonsensical results. When using generative AI tools, students should always check the content they deliver against other sources to ensure accuracy and use their own critical thinking to evaluate whether or not the output is actually useful. A high level of reliance on generative AI may negatively impact the mark of a piece of work and / or be treated as academic misconduct (see 'Plagiarism and assessment misconduct' section above).

• Students are not permitted to copy any text produced by a generative AI tool into a summative assessment. All text submitted for assessments must be the students' own original work.
• Students are permitted to use generative AI tools for the following types of assignment preparation:
  
      -- Searching academic or grey literature
      -- Suggesting assignment structures or titles
      -- Transcription
      -- Text editing and proofreading
  
  If a student uses generative AI in the above ways, they must include at the beginning of the assignment a statement that explains how it has been used and what value it offered during assignment preparation, using the following template.
• If a student uses the results of generative AI in an assignment (for example, as a source of information or evidence for a particular argument), they must cite its usage.
• Failing to cite the generative AI source is academic misconduct. In this context, please remember that copying generative AI output into a summative assessment is not permitted, regardless of whether cited or not.

Get the most from your feedback

The following handbook on How to Use Feedback Effectively, produced by the Department of Social Policy, gives excellent guidance on how to understand and use the feedback you receive. You can use it to support your engagement with feedback of all kinds, and to develop the ways you use the advice to improve your work.

Formative and summative assessment feedback

Throughout your MSc programme you will receive feedback in diverse forms and on a variety of aspects of the development of your understanding of the field of media and communications and on your performance.

During the year you will receive written feedback on your formative and summative assessment assignments. This written feedback can then be discussed with your academic mentor, supervisor and the course teacher for the assessed course.

After the conclusion of the dissertation marking process, you will receive written feedback on your dissertation. You will receive brief written feedback on your examinations within the department.

Information on the timeframe of feedback can be found in Section 2 of the LSE Academic Code.

Other kinds of feedback you will receive during the year

You will receive oral feedback during seminars with your seminar teachers as you develop your ideas and participate in seminar activities.

You will work in small groups in your seminars, interacting with your peers, who give you feedback on how your learning is progressing.

You will receive face to face feedback from your academic mentor in Michaelmas Term and from your dissertation supervisor in Lent and Summer Term. This feedback may be about your overall learning and progression, on a specific aspect of your development, or on your performance in a specific assignment.

You will receive oral feedback on the development of your dissertation ideas from your Supervisor during Feedback and Advice hours and during group supervision sessions. Feedback and advice hours of other staff are also good opportunities to receive feedback on the development of your dissertation ideas.

You also will receive oral feedback from academic staff providing any extra-curricular activities you register for during the year, for example, on essay writing, citation practice or language skills. You will receive feedback from mentors if you choose to engage in internship activities facilitated by LSE and by the Department.

Please note that there is no provision for summative work to be re-marked, and students are not permitted negotiate their provisional grade with staff.

The Department’s marking standards and the rigour of its processes are reviewed each year by the Department’s External Examiners who report to the Department’s Exam Sub-Board and to the School. We are confident that our assessment and marking processes are robust, and as such students are not able to call into question the academic judgement of markers.

Students may make an appointment to meet with the marker of their work, the course convenor, their academic mentor, or any other member of staff to discuss provisional grades and feedback, but as mentioned above, students cannot negotiate their grade or ask for work to be re-marked. It may also be useful to speak to LSE LIFE who can help students develop future work using the feedback they have received.

Students are permitted to submit Exceptional Circumstances, which will be considered by the Departmental and School Exam Boards. Individual marks cannot be changed as a result of the submission of Exceptional Circumstances, but the Exam Boards can take your circumstances into account when considering your final degree classification.

Students can review the following webpage for advice and guidance on Challenging Results once they have been released formally.