Understanding the Updated Interim Assessment Regulations at HSE

The new edition of the Regulations took effect on March 1, 2024. The provisions primarily impact the retake sessions scheduled for September 2024, following the 3rd and 4th modules of the 2023/24 academic year. Annex 11 to the Regulations, Special Features of Interim Assessments at the HSE International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF), remains effective until October 16, 2024.

1 September 2024 is the date after which the new rules will apply to all students, except for those in their final year (approximately 20% of whom, about 5% might have arrears resulting from the third module, making up a total of 1% of the student body) regarding decisions on participation in retakes and repeated study of a course.

For the 1% of students who did not cope with mastering the disciplines in their final year, and for students who must participate in the second retake of an independent exam, the new rules start to apply from the entry into force of the Regulations on 1 March.

The new edition of the document is introduced with the following objectives:

• to clarify rules that previously could be interpreted ambiguously by different participants in the educational process;
• to introduce rules for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by students;
• to describe the peculiarities of training students belonging to specific categories;
• to specify the organisation of re-studying disciplines after receiving unsatisfactory grades following the first resit;
• to provide a more detailed description of the rules for applying independent assessments of student competencies and external evaluations, if provided by the educational programme.

Yes. Students must declare the use of AI technologies in the following ways:

• when submitting term papers and final theses, they must specify the AI technologies used and assess their effectiveness via the LMS module, the interface of which features options to declare this use—see guidelines on how to upload student papers and theses in LMS.
• for all other written and oral assignments, which can be checked for plagiarism at the discretion of a respective course instructor, students (or a group of students) must describe their AI usage in the introduction or conclusion of their work (a dedicated section), where they have to state the purpose for using the model, identify the model by name, provide its internet URL or describe an alternative source for the model, and explain how the model was applied in the work. Faculty have the authority to grade such assignment as 'fail' if AI use is not properly declared, or if its use was explicitly prohibited.

Read more about plagiarism policy at HSE here.

The updated text of the Regulations does not change the cumulative grading system: the weights of the accumulated grades are not adjusted during the second retake, which is convened to administer a student’s examination for the third time.

An examination is merely one of the many assessment elements considered when calculating the final or interim grade for a discipline. The grade for the examination may change during the first or second retake, but all other accumulated grades remain unchanged. This underscores the essence of the cumulative grading system at HSE University: each student earns their grade for the course by completing assessment elements, so the same rule applies to students who have not accumulated anything: a zero result is not 'reset' or adjusted during retakes—the opposite scenario would unfairly advantage students in obtaining a higher final grade at the retakes than those whose final grade is calculated including accumulated grades (cumulative grade) from all assessment elements.

This system ensures that all assessments contribute fairly to the final grade, maintaining the integrity of the cumulative grading approach. The only opportunity to improve an accumulated grade is to reschedule the second retake and repeat the study of the course after failing an exam (if this option is available to the student) or re-study the course after reinstatement at the university if failing a course leads to expulsion.

Among the assessment elements, there may be those which cannot be repeated—they constitute up to 30 percent of the total weight. If low grades are received for such elements, no improvements can be made. A typical example of a non-repetitive assessment element is attendance—only 15% of instructors use it in their courses.

Repeated study of courses for which academic failures were not cleared after the first retake will be organised according to a revised scheme starting from the autumn retake period of the 2023/24 academic year (except for final-year students and independent exams on digital competencies— for these this rule applies from March 1st). As before, the right to repeat a course will only be granted to students with academic failures in no more than two courses.

New: After the first retake, students must decide responsibly whether to participate in a second retake during the current period or postpone it to the next available retake period (taking place no later than one calendar year after the first retake).

A deferred second retake is possible after re-attending the course and passing all ongoing assessment components. A more detailed description of the process is available at the link.

A student has the right to either attempt the second retake or defer it to avoid the risk of expulsion in case of unsatisfactory performance during the third examination attempt.

Thus, students face the following two scenarios after they have failed an exam for the second time, receiving an unsatisfactory grade on the first retake:

1. Decide to attempt the exam for the third time, proceed to the second retake on the scheduled date, and then:

• If you achieve a satisfactory grade on the second retake (third exam attempt) —> you successfully continue your studies.
• If you receive an unsatisfactory grade on the second retake (third exam attempt) —> you are dismissed but may be reinstated.

2. Decide not to take the risk (e.g., due to low accumulated grades), and then you must:

• Within two calendar days of the announcement of the first retake results, submit an application for the postponement of the retake date for the course and its repeated study—by doing this, you postpone this third attempt until after you have re-studied the course, after which you have one final chance to pass.

Depending on your status, you should be aware of the following:

a) If you are studying at a place funded by federal budget resources, you are required to transfer to a fee-paying educational contract to continue your studies and re-study the course;

b) If you are studying under an educational services contract, the cost will include re-studying the course;

c) If you belong to a special category of students, and you accrue academic debts for the first time in no more than two subjects during retakes, including the course for which you are deferring the third attempt, you are entitled to re-study the course free of charge.

• After re-studying the course, you must use your last chance to pass the exam (deferred third attempt), but if you still receive an unsatisfactory grade, this results in dismissal, after which you may be reinstated.

From the session of the third module onwards, when conflicts arise involving multiple exams, retakes, or classes, students can decide whether they are comfortable with multiple events scheduled on the same day. Students have the right to report such conflicts to the study office, where the programme manager will find an alternative date to avoid overlaps.

To report a valid reason for absence, students should use the service available through the provided link.

The introduction of the Student Performance Assessment (SPA) has for the first time elaborated and formalised long-standing rules in greater detail. SPA allows students to understand how programme managers and academic supervisors analyse their diligence in mastering the educational programme.

In simple terms, SPA is the count of courses for which a student has unsatisfactory grades.

The automation of this assessment calculation is currently being implemented, and shortly, students will be able to monitor their SPA through the Learning Management System (LMS) gradebook.

The definition of an independent examination has been expanded beyond the previously exclusive obligatory English test (HSE’s test or the Independent English Language Test) and Independent Examinations in Digital Competencies to potentially include new exams in other subject areas in the future.

Both the existing and new versions of the Regulations introduce a specific system for evaluating the outcomes of learning digital skills, as well as motivating students to evenly distribute their efforts in developing digital skills over two or three years. Each student in the Bachelor’s and Specialist programmes is assessed in three digital competencies: digital literacy, programming, and data analysis. Depending on the educational programme, each competency may involve: (a) a course (prerequisite discipline), (b) an independent examination, and (c) an external assessment of digital competencies.

A mutual crediting for a higher grade is envisaged if the grade in any of the components (a), (b), or (c) is higher.

This motivational norm for grade substitution is applied if two conditions are met:

1. The independent examination (b) is passed with a grade above 3 out of 10;
2. The student has participated in an external assessment (if included in their curriculum) such that their performance does not degrade (looking at previous external assessments if available) by 2 points or more.

In such cases, for the grades that will be included in the appendix to the diploma (items "a" and "b"), a replacement with the highest of "a," "b," or "c" will be performed.

This rule for improving grades operates separately three times, analyzing such results:

• Digital literacy, independent examination in digital literacy, initial external assessment from Innopolis;
• Programming, independent examination in programming, intermediate external assessment from Innopolis;
• Data analysis etc., independent examination in data analysis, final external assessment from Innopolis.

Improvement of grades occurs even if (a) is not passed or if (c) is passed with an unsatisfactory grade (according to the HSE grading scale). There are specific restrictions on "a" (not higher than 8); a non-linear conversion scale for "c" to HSE grades has been introduced—details of which are outlined in the text and appendices of the Regulations.

• The new edition of the Regulations specifies that a reassessment towards improvement occurs once a year after the summer exam period but no later than July 10 (footnote 20 in the Regulations).
• If a student has two sets of competency assessments in one year, then the higher grades for the purposes of annual ranking, transition to a state-funded place, etc., will be the ones improved.
• If during this academic year, a student's external assessments from Innopolis demonstrate regression (by 2 points or more), then the improvement rule of July 10 will not apply to them.
• If the student's curriculum envisages taking the third assessment in another academic year, a scenario may arise where previously made credits from the past year are reviewed: the credits will be cancelled, and the student will receive the grades they earned by participating in "a" or "b" both times. If the student had failures in prerequisite courses during this process, they will be counted in the total number of failures after the nearest exam period.
• However, considering that the final external assessment takes place after the completion of all courses and passing all independent examinations of the Data Culture module, the likelihood of demonstrating results worse than one's own by 2 points or more differs from zero only if the student does not engage responsibly in passing the test, which is quite comfortable for thoughtful, slow completion of all given tasks.