An academic at Unisa has expressed fears that lecturers will be “pressurised to falsely inflate marks” as pass rates in modules are among the performance indicators that will be used to determine staff bonuses.
But the institution says each department determines its own performance indicators and academics have a say in how the performance management process works.
The academic’s concerns come after the institution – the largest open distance learning institution in Africa – included for the first time students’ throughput rate as one of the criteria for assessing academic performance.
According to Unisa’s academic performance agreement template, seen by Sunday Times Daily, staff in all faculties and departments opting to use students throughput rate as one of the criteria will be awarded a score of between 1 and 5.
For example, a lecturer whose throughput rate for a module is less than 55% will be awarded a score of 1 for “unacceptable performance”, while a score of 5 will be given for “outstanding performance” if the throughput rate is more than 90%.
Among the specific objectives academics are expected to achieve was “developing, managing and implementing measures to improve student throughput, success and attrition rates”.
According to the academic performance agreement template, the evidence that will be used to assess a lecturer’s performance under each objective should also be specified in the performance agreement.
Lecturers have extraordinary discretion about how ‘strictly’ to set an assessment and how strictly to mark it.
— Academic
The academic, who wished not to be identified, said the new performance management document “creates an explicit incentive to inflate the pass rate”.
“Lecturers have extraordinary discretion about how ‘strictly’ to set an assessment and how strictly to mark it.”
The academic said there were “vast discrepancies” across Unisa’s colleges, where modules in one college had much higher pass rates than modules in other colleges.
“What is being required in this new performance management document does not assess lecturers on their efforts but the outcomes of those efforts.
“Basically whether one will receive a bonus is now informed by how many students you pass.”
The academic said Unisa was also putting pressure on staff to replace written assessments (including exam questions) with multiple-choice questions (MCQs).
“While MCQs have always been a feature of many modules’ exams, most universities do not allow them to dominate the exam question paper.
“At Unisa, in the June 2020 exams, many departments had exams where the whole paper was MCQs which students wrote at home.”
The academic said the law college “had exceptionally high pass rates in June, which were much higher than in previous years”.
If students’ pass rate was included in academic performance agreements, it was the decision of a specific academic department or college to do so.
— Unisa
Unisa said in an e-mailed response that the contents of the academic performance agreement was decided by each college and academic department based on the 2020 college and departmental operational plans.
“If students’ pass rate was included in academic performance agreements, it was the decision of a specific academic department or college to do so.”
The university said academics had a say in the content of their individual performance agreement.
“The university’s performance management policy stipulates that employees are not obliged to sign their performance agreements and are at liberty to construct or change their agreements.”
“Thus if academics were of the opinion that their department perversely tries to force an increased pass rate, they were under no obligation to sign their agreements.”
Unisa said the performance agreement contained several key performance areas (KPA) with a whole array of objectives under each KPA, each with its own weight.
“The weighting of an individual objective, therefore, cannot have a determining influence on the overall performance rating.”
It denied that it was advocating for the use of multiple-choice questions in the whole exam paper.
“MCQs is not the major format of exams set although randomised MCQs with time limits is an ideal format for online exams for large first-year modules.”
It said the forms of assessment included full essay type questions, mathematical calculations, lab exams and work-integrated learning assessments.
“It is common practice in universities across the world to have some exams, where appropriate, that are fully or partially comprising of multiple-choice questions for some modules.”
Academics were under no obligation to sign their agreements.
The institution said lecturers were required to attend training on how to develop higher order questions for multiple-choice exams as well as how to set randomised multiple-choice questions.
Unisa declined to divulge the June exam pass rate for students from the law college.
Meanwhile, Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) is allowing all registered students to write the November exams even if they did not obtain “the required exam predicate mark of 40%”.
TUT’s vice-chancellor Prof Lourens van Staden said students who failed the exam would be allowed another opportunity to write it.
The university’s Senex endorsed the temporary changes to the exam admission rules at a meeting on November 2.
Van Staden said the predicate mark would contribute 40% of the total final mark while the exams would contribute 60%.
“All final marks will be calculated using this formula,” he said.
The start of the exams at TUT on Monday could be disrupted if a planned march goes ahead.
According to posts on social media, there are demands for students not to write the contact exams but instead write them online.
Huge marquees have been erected at TUT’s main campus in Pretoria to cater for the thousands of students expected to sit for the exams.
