Final Master's Module "Major Project" Dissertation Feedback

I shared last week my final assessment mark for my Master's degree, which was documented as 71% but I got such detailed feedback, I thought I would share exactly where I lost marks. I was genuinely really happy when I saw my score, but with being in hospital and having pneumonia, it took me a couple of weeks before I looked through the feedback and with that I ended up questioning my grade. 

The project was marked by two separate markers but it looked like the first marker gave me a much higher mark, so it was a little disappointing that there was such a large difference, but the biggest error was that the marks given correlate to my total score. I'm sure it was just an admin error, however when I added up the individual section scores for them all, Chapter 3 totalled 20 and not 17, therefore I actually got 74%. 


With that being a very clear mistake, I then questioned a couple of the other sections as the marks had boundaries and the actual mark given wasn't documented. In Chapter 2 it could have been 12 to 14 marks and for Chapter 5, there was one section that could have been 6 or 7 marks.

 

Marker 1

Marker 2 / Agreed

Documented Mark in Error

Chapter 1 / 25

19.5

18

/

Chapter 2 / 15

12+

11

?

Chapter 3 / 25

21

20

17 (needs 3 adding)

Chapter 4 / 10

7

7

/

Chapter 5 / 25

19+

18+

?

Total

78.5+

74+

71 (needs 3 adding)


The biggest frustration when I started to go through the feedback and marking rubric is that I lost 3 very easy marks lost for the abstract being too long. I went with what the module lead had said in one of the teaching sessions who informed us to do around 500 words but said it had no limit. Stupidly, I didn't go back to the mark scheme for that section, where it very clearly says 150 – 300 words. I should have checked one last time before submitting, because had I have seen that I obviously would have cut this down significantly and probably got the 3 extra marks as the content itself was high quality, but the markers literally couldn't give me more than 2 out of 5. 


On a similar wavelength, the second marker also seemed to dislike my reference technique, even though my technique was consistent throughout and is the same as I have been doing for my entire academic career. She wanted titles in quotation marks, instead of bold. She also didn't like that in one section of a direct quote that I didn't put a page number, but this was not possible due to the age of the document. Likewise, she felt the references (when multiple) that they should be oldest to newest, but I was always taught newest to oldest. To me, these were quite big comments, but as far as I can see, there were no marks lost for this which is good. 


For Chapter 2, I was told that there was excellent use of literature to support the argument, but it could have finished with a stronger statement relating back to the gap in knowledge that the project will address.


With Chapter 3, I started very strongly. The first section on Methodology was very strongly and the markers really liked the tables included to demonstrate understanding without impacting on the word count. Again, the next section on Search Strategy was described as a fantastic level of detail to be replicable and comprehensive, with an honest discussion on the quality of the search. I lost the most marks for the Ethics section but there's no feedback on this section and I actually felt I had done this very well and very detailed. 


Just like previous assessments, for Chapter 4, my biggest feedback was about the lacking critical analysis. Luckily, this Chapter had the lowest amount of marks available so despite being having a lot of areas of feedback relating to this, I didn't lose too many marks overall.


Chapter 5 very much reflected what I felt would be marked, as I struggled with the Discussion aspect and that was when I had difficulties with feedback from my supervisor, so it was the main section I felt I needed support with, but didn't get any (or received very little). I felt I did really good with the Limitations and Future Recommendations, but I was a little surprised with my mark for the Conclusions section in the end. I would like to have feedback on these sections on how to improve, but the feedback in-text comments got less frequent as the project went on therefore there aren't many comments for Chapter 5 at all. 


Overall, despite the high mark which I was genuinely happy with, I'm always trying to be better and do better. Of course, I would have loved the extra marks and to have got my goal of a Distinction overall, but nevertheless I tried my best and did as much work as I could. I'm very frustrated at the 3 easy marks I lost for the Abstract but unfortunately, nothing I can do about it now. 

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