Final Assessment Guideline From Rector

2020-05-02 To All Students/Faculty: Final Assessments and Semester End

Preparations
Guidelines for the Final Assessments in the light of online education related policy decisions of IoBM.
Type of online assessments. Policy on attendance, plagiarism, and expectations of high ethical standards
and integrity. Connectivity or system issues redressal.
Sat, May 2, 8:54 PM (9 days ago)
to IoBM, Syed, Asim, Amber, Rabiya, Sabina, President

Dear Students:

Your educational efforts in facing the challenges posed by this pandemic are impressive. There are many
doctors, volunteers, security personnel, factory workers and others who are at the front line risking their
lives to provide treatment, medicine, care, and livelihood for those who are ill, suffering and without
work. These valiant professionals have also put at risk their loved ones through their interactions with
the affectees. Many among them have even sacrificed their lives, and may Allah reward them for their
sacrifices.

I think studying hard and working to the best of our abilities is the minimum we can do for our future,
for our families and others impacted by this pandemic.

The management of IoBM appreciates all the hard work that you have put into this semester in coping
with the demands of online education.  As you enter the final weeks of the Spring Semester, we
understand that you have to modify the way you work and manage your time. We  are cognizant of the
challenges you are facing, and are committed to striving with you to make this experience of online
education fruitful and worthwhile.

To fulfill the demands of online education, IoBM has modified the policies of physical attendance,
education and examinations to accommodate asynchronous interactions which help in mitigating the
connectivity issues (including power breakdowns and equipment failure issues).  Patterns of online
assessment have been modified to focus more on measuring your learning and assessing the
"originality" of your insights rather than on your rote memorization. Your engagement now contributes
to your attendance which can be in the form of your participation in various class  activities,
assignments, LMS activities and resources and through chat, whatsapp, email, Zoom, or other platforms.

The duration of final assessment has been extended to help overcome the deadline time anxiety that
you may have had in uploading answer sheets due to connectivity issues. We are also spreading out
your final assessment start times and submission times on the stipulated dates. This will help you in
downloading final assessments papers and uploading your answer sheets without difficulty onto LMS.
This will also allow our support teams to better help you if you face any issues. Please make sure that on
the day of your final assessment you do verify the start-end time on IoBM website as the Examination
Department is continually tweaking the schedule to respond better to the issues that are being
reported.

Teams from academic departments consisting of HoDs, their support staff and faculty along with the
examination department, IT as well as the higher management are continually monitoring the systems
and are on standby to promptly respond to your queries and concerns.

In case of any issue be very specific about the issue in your emails, and include your id, course code,
section ID and other particulars. For course related issues do connect with the course HoDs. Please note
that we are in a lockdown and remotely working and we need this information to log into systems, and
query the CMS and LMS and obtain the desired information from particular courses on LMS or Smartz to
better serve you.

Last, but not the least, a word of caution. Please note that the final assessments are open book
assignments that you will be submitting asynchronously. As such the emphasis is on a qualitative
assessment of originality of students' submissions. Originality checks are traditionally done using class
presentations that typically are conducted before the dead week or they may consist of viva or
video/report submissions which typically happen after the exams for projects or similar take home
activities. You need to be aware of what are the different patterns of plagiarism, which can be easily
checked using plagiarism detection softwares. Plagiarism or any kind of fraud cannot be condoned.
Instead of copying and pasting and then trying to tweak it, you are better off just writing down your
insights and understanding in your own words.  

IoBM holds you to high standards of integrity.

I once again congratulate you on reaching the finals of the semester and wish you all the best.

Dr Irfan Hyder
Rector