The aims of the Semester Tests in Year 1 are to assess knowledge and understanding relating to Semester 1 (Life Cycle) and Semester 2 (Cardio-respiratory Fitness) and they will take place at the end of each semester.

Semester Tests are comprised of 125 questions and will last for 2.5 hours.

The examination uses multiple choice questions with a choice of a single best answer from 5 options, testing specific knowledge. Negative marking is not used; a wrong answer will simply be awarded a mark of zero.

Both your January and May Semester Tests (and resit equivalents) will be delivered on campus via an electronic exam platform using University devices. All students will have the opportunity to practice using the electronic assessment platform via the mid & end Formative Semester Tests.

The results will be classified as: Unsatisfactory (U), Low Pass (LP), Satisfactory (S), Honours (H) and Distinction (D).

The knowledge of students will be compared against that of their colleagues within the same semester, rather than setting an arbitrary pass mark. This means that the pass mark will vary from examination to examination and can account for inevitable variations in exam difficulty. Using a validated standard-setting method (the modified Cohen method) a reference mark is established for each examination; the reference mark being that of the student at the 90th percentile. The results are then graded so that:

• A mark less than 0.65 x the 90th percentile mark is classified as Unsatisfactory (U).
• A mark between 0.70 and 0.65 x the 90th percentile is classed as Low Pass (LP).
• A mark equal to 0.7 x the 90th percentile mark, is taken to be Satisfactory (S).
• A mark between 0.95 and 1.05 x the 90th percentile is classed as Honours (H)
• A mark greater than 1.05 x the 90th percentile is a Distinction (D).

For the Semester Test re-sit, the low pass/unsatisfactory boundary is determined as the average of the low pass/unsatisfactory boundary of the 3 previous tests for the particular semester. Other grade boundaries for the re-sit tests are calculated in the same way.