Assessors must have the expertise required for their task.
Provisions on disqualification apply to assessment. Disqualified individuals cannot assess studies. The University’s guidelines on disqualification can be found on Flamma.
The same teacher must assess all the answers to a given task in an examination, unless other arrangements are justified in view of the nature of the examination. Examinations whose assessment requires exceptional consideration must be assessed, where possible, by a minimum of two assessors.
Examinations can be divided into those unconnected to teaching and those connected to teaching. Examples of examinations unconnected to teaching include courses in the curriculum that students can complete by sitting an examination on the relevant literature or other learning material. Examples of examinations connected to teaching include examinations held during or at the end of lecture-based teaching and examinations connected to online teaching.
An examination can be held on a given date and time or during a specific period of time, and can be organised physically in a venue designated by the University or remotely. Examinations can be carried out as electronic or pen-and-paper examinations, or as combinations thereof. Examinations can also be organised as oral tests or competence tests.
The session at which students can complete an examination is known as an examination session. It enables the assessment of learning, but also serves as a learning situation.
Examination Services under University Services is responsible for holding general examination sessions, at which students can complete both examinations unconnected to teaching and those connected to teaching, usually resit examinations.
The registration period for a general examination session ends 10 days before it. Teachers cannot give students permission to attend a general examination session if they have not registered for it in the required manner. Students who fail to register for a general examination session during the registration period cannot attend the examination session or receive the examination tasks at the session.
Teachers must submit the examination tasks to the organiser in the format to be distributed to students. The tasks must be submitted no later than three working days before the general examination session. Correspondingly, the tasks included in a digital on-site examination must be completed and available on the examination platform no later than three working days before the general examination session so that Examination Services can check their functionality and, if necessary, assist the teacher.
In addition, teachers must inform the organiser of the examination session of what materials in which formats students can take with them to the examination session or use during the examination. In addition, teachers must provide the organiser of the examination session with the basic course details as well as the same instructions for completing the examination that they have given to students.
If the examination session is connected to your own teaching, you are responsible for organising and invigilating it. The times and dates of examinations connected to teaching as well as the number, times and dates of resit examinations must be announced no later than when teaching begins. Students must, however, always be offered at least one opportunity to resit examinations connected to teaching.
If an examination connected to teaching takes place during a teaching session or at a date and time agreed with the teacher, students do not need to separately register for the examination. In such cases, it is sufficient that the students have registered for the teaching. If students must also separately register for examinations connected to teaching, they must be provided with instructions on how to do so.
Teachers must provide students with sufficient instructions for examinations and ensure that examination sessions proceed appropriately.
Further information on examinations and their organisation is available here.
Unless the nature of the examined discipline or teaching requires otherwise, students are entitled to use Finnish or Swedish in completing their studies, and written examinations and other study-related assignments will be provided in the language requested by the student, in other words, Finnish or Swedish.
In English-language degree programmes, examination tasks are provided in English, and students must complete them in English.
In Swedish-language degree programmes, examination tasks are given in Swedish, and students must complete them in Swedish.
In language subjects, tasks are usually given in the language in question, and students must complete them in the same language.
As a rule, tasks included in examinations connected to teaching are given in the language in which the teaching was provided.
University of Helsinki employees (with a valid work contract) and units can have their examination questions in Swedish revised at the Language Centre’s Language Services, if the examiner is a non-native speaker of Swedish. Please note that clients placing a language revision order are responsible for the accuracy of special terminology in the relevant discipline or field.
Further information on the language policy for studies and degrees is available here.
As a rule, examination tasks and grading criteria are considered public. They can be deemed secret only under the circumstances set out in section 24 of the Act on the Openness of Government Activities, that is, when access would compromise the achievement of the objectives of the examination or test, or prevent its future use.
If there are grounds under the above Act for keeping examination tasks and, possibly, grading criteria secret, the relevant faculty council decides on their secrecy. The decision can apply to a single course or a certain type of teaching. The decision is made when approving the curriculum or its amendments.
Examination tasks and grading criteria that are to be kept secret can only be disclosed to the relevant parties, that is, the students or teachers involved in the assessment of the course or learning as well as the administrative staff who work with the course or teaching. When a student gains access to secret examination tasks and grading criteria for reasons of sitting the examination (parties’ right of access), they must be informed that they are bound by the obligation of secrecy and confidentiality with regard to the information they receive. In addition, students cannot use secret information to their own benefit or to the benefit or detriment of another.
Under section 40 of the Regulations on Degrees and the Protection of Students’ Rights at the University of Helsinki, student answers and related notes may not be disclosed to third parties or published without permission from the student. The answers may not be used for teaching and research purposes without permission from the student.
If an examination includes compulsory components or components that must be passed for the other examination components to be assessed, this must be announced to students no later than when they register for the examination or, if registration is not required, no later than 10 days before the examination session.
Answers are assessed on the scale indicated in the curriculum. Assessment results are recorded in the student information system. The following procedure applies in special cases:
Handing in a blank paper or leaving the examination session without handing in any material is not possible and cannot be entered into the student information system. If the student has seen the examination tasks, their grade will be recorded in the student information system, depending on their answers, on a scale of 0–5, as pass–fail or as good, satisfactory or fail.
Teachers must assess completed studies well before the next opportunity to complete or register for them, but no later than within one month from the date of completion. Between 1 June and 31 August, teachers may assess completed studies within more than one month of the date of completion. The results of the Finnish specialist examination in medicine and dentistry must be announced within six weeks of the examination.
Teachers confirm the assessment of completed studies. In the case of several assessors, all of their names must be indicated, and it must also be indicated which assessor is responsible for assessing which examination answer.
Students must receive information on their grade from the student information system. If completed studies are not registered in the student information system, it is recommended that information on each student’s grade is given only to the student. If this is challenging due, for example, to the large number of students, information on grades may be announced on a student number–specific basis through an electronic learning environment so that the information is available only to the students who took the relevant course or attended the relevant teaching sessions. Students’ names must not be announced in this connection.
Teachers must draw up a distribution of grades if at least five students completed the same course or examination at the same time. Teachers can decide how they present the distribution of grades, for example, as a diagram or table. Student numbers, student names or other identifying information may not appear in connection with the grade distribution.
After the announcement of examination results, students who have completed the examination always have the right to view their own answers. They also have the right to receive information on grading criteria and how they have been applied. In other words, students must have the opportunity to review how their answers have been assessed.
In connection with the announcement of the examination results at the latest, the assessor must also inform the students where the examination answers will be retained, and where and when the students may view their assessed answers. Students have the right to take a photocopy of their examination answers at their own expense. When using, for example, the electronic Moodle learning environment, teachers can make each student’s answers available to the student in question.
The grading criteria of each examination must be announced in connection with the announcement of the examination results at the latest.
The appropriate manner of publishing the grading criteria is at the discretion of the teacher. The grading criteria may be published, for example, as examination feedback or at an examination feedback session if feedback is given to a large group of students. Feedback given during the teacher’s office hours may be a sensible solution if only a few students sit an examination.
If the drafting and announcement of detailed grading criteria is not reasonable, given the nature of the examination or the number of participants, students must, nevertheless, be informed in connection with the announcement of the results about the criteria and how they were applied to them.
In accordance with section 44 of the Universities Act, students’ answers must be retained for at least six months from the announcement of the results. The University’s instructions for storing and disposing of documents are available on Flamma.
Grades, assessment and grading criteria
Rector’s Decision HY/5740/00.00.06.00/2022, 14 June 2022: University of Helsinki principles for examinations
Assessment and grading in different systems