Good Practice Guidelines for Mandatory Course Requirements

Victoria University has defined in Section 4.3 of the Assessment Statute the concept of Mandatory Course Requirements. These are requirements within courses that students must also meet in order to receive the grade assessed for their work. Where a student has obtained an overall mark of 50% or more, but failed to meet the Mandatory Course Requirements, the outcome will be the award of a failing ‘K’ grade. It is quite acceptable for a course to have no Mandatory Course Requirements.

Mandatory Course Requirements, which must be stated in the course outline, should be stated simply and clearly and must only include requirements that can be reliably monitored and measured. They should be relevant to the course learning objectives or programme learning goals. In particular, they should not:

1. merely restate existing policies or requirements of the University, such as obtaining an overall pass mark from assessments, being enrolled on the course, or (rather recursively) complying with Mandatory Course Requirements;
2. involve subjective terms that cannot be measured (eg. 'satisfactorily complete both tests' or 'participate fully in tutorials');
3. describe staff expectations of student behaviour (eg. 'behave in a professional manner' or 'exhibit a positive attitude').

Mandatory Course Requirements specifying 100% attendance at specific activities are discouraged unless that really is vital for meeting the course learning objectives. Even then, they need to be stated in a way that allows for medical or other emergencies, eg. 'must attend all lectures unless excused by the coordinator'. Alternatively, the attendance expectation could be stated elsewhere in the course outline rather than as a Mandatory Course Requirement.

Also to be used sparingly are Mandatory Course Requirements which require a student to achieve pass marks in every item of assessment, since that means automatic failure for a student who falls below 50% in a single item. It may be more reasonable to set 40% as the minimum standard.

Examples of useful Mandatory Course Requirements include:

1. those that require students to achieve a specific minimum grade for one or more items of assessed work, so as to ensure they meet all of the learning objectives for the course, not just those carrying the highest proportion of marks, eg. “Students must obtain at least 40% in the exam”; or
2. those that require participation in a certain percentage of a specified activity, such as laboratories, seminars or tutorials, where such participation is essential for the collective experience of all of the students, or addresses experiences linked to the learning objectives of the course eg. “Students must attend seven of ten tutorials”.
3. attendance at safety training sessions.

Staff from the Centre for Academic Development are happy to provide guidance and feedback on proposed course outlines on request.