icas feedback

The Magician

How long should I expect to wait for ICAS feedback?

It's been over a week now..........

When do you think I should "hurry" them along?

Jo Clark

Hello

Have you not been given or told by your tutor how long to expect till the feedback is available.

What you need to remember is that you may not be the only student that your tutor is marking ICAS for. My tutor had 50/60 students in my cohort, and this will include a variety of 3 different case studies as well as those who are completing this work based.

My tutor told me to allow 14 days from upload and I received my feedback after 9 days so was happy, not that I was in a rush to receive the feedback.

Hopefully you won't have to wait too much longer and I hope you don't have any trouble like other students have with receiving feedback and marks etc.

Let us know when you receive your feedback.


JC

The Magician

Hiya Jo,

Have you had feedback from your first draft yet?

I've only sent off the proposal.

I received an automated email stating that they aim to provide feedback within 14 days. Which is a bit rubbish really.

The old AAT qualification has 4 hour simulation exams and feedback was always provided within a two week time frame.

I just seem very anxious at the moment-- this is the last unit for me. I just want it put to bed and do not want to miss the cut off for the exams in May next year.

What sort of problems have other students experienced? Should I fear the worst? Have I made a mistake going with Kaplan? :crying:

coojee

The Magician wrote: »

Hiya Jo,

Have you had feedback from your first draft yet?

I've only sent off the proposal.

I received an automated email stating that they aim to provide feedback within 14 days. Which is a bit rubbish really.

The old AAT qualification has 4 hour simulation exams and feedback was always provided within a two week time frame.

I just seem very anxious at the moment-- this is the last unit for me. I just want it put to bed and do not want to miss the cut off for the exams in May next year.

What sort of problems have other students experienced? Should I fear the worst? Have I made a mistake going with Kaplan? :crying:

Why do you think that 14 days is rubbish? You have to bear in mind that your tutor will be marking lots of other pieces of work for lots of other students and they will mark them in order of date received so if you're number 50 in the pile of marking then you'll have to wait for the previous 49 to be marked before yours gets marked. The fact that yours will only be a 15 minute job to look at and comment on doesn't make any difference to the process. Tutors wouldn't be being fair if they prioritised one students work over another. You have to think of each submission for ICAS (and that includes the idea) as one simulation ie each submission can take up to 2 weeks to be marked. You have to factor that into your timescales when planning your workload for this unit. I'd advise not contacting your tutor before the 14 days are up if you've been told that that's when they aim to feedback, it'll only annoy them. Also having to reply to students asking where their feedback is eats into the tutors time when they could be marking so it delays the marking even more.

Jo Clark

Well said Coojee

Magician, When I read your original message I thought you meant that you had uploaded the actual report, not just the proposal. I appreciate that you are eager to register for the exams next year, do you know what the cut off date is?

As per my message above, I received feedback in 9 days after uploading my first full draft and my tutor has about 50/60 students in her ICAS Assessor cohort as well as being a distance learning tutor.

I don't know what providers other students have been with so can't really comment.

Don't panic I'm sure it will all fall into place.

vickie88

I was with kaplan.

My tutor took about 8 weeks to mark my first draft and than my second and third draft was about 2 weeks.

Just depends how many reports they have to mark x

WAD2001

Hi

It took 2 days for my first upload to be marked and 5 days for my second. I received a competant back yesterday.

It all depends on your provider and subsequently their workload. As long as you upload your final submission before the end date set by your provider you will be OK. AAT have no control over these submission end dates and they can only be extended by your provider so I am sure that if they felt that they couldn't mark everyones within the timescale then they would extend the deadline.

The Magician

Thanks for your replies - appreciated.

I would like to canvass the opinion of experts here.

I was told that I should focus on one stakeholder group only either internal or external? Using the BPP case-study as the yardstick that would seem a bit strange....? They focus on several?

Apparently every recommendation should have a cost attached to it.... though of course how do you attach costs to qualitative aspects i.e. resistance to change. You can measure productivity prior and post implementation, I guess but it would be impossible to accurately attach these costs to every recommendation. Besides The BPP case study does not do this for every recommendation. It would be baseless and without merit, plucking figures out the sky.

I only thought you had to attach costs to your cost benefit analysis?

Some of the questions the tutor has highlighted I really do feel I have already answered in my proposal.

If I'm wrong I am happy to admit it, but I have been guided by the BPP case study and I have found it a god-send.

Jo Clark

Hello Magician

I'm no expert but happy to try and help. You are studying with Kaplan if I remember rightly, and using the BPP book. Do Kaplan have a book for ICAS? Perhaps different training providers and indeed tutors/assessors have different views on what should/shouldn't be included and where.

With regards to stakeholders I covered both but am doing a different case study to you. For costs, don't forget that there will be tangible and intangible costs and benefits. Depending on your recommendations you should be able to calculate costs and savings, for example, implementing 'something' will cost £x however there will be a saving of £y. You should have details of salaries in the case study and again, depending on your recommendations you can research costings.

You should mention a cost/saving in the summary as this will encourage the report reader to want to read the rest of your report if they can see a saving.

Try not to focus too closely on the BPP Case Study.

You need to ensure that you make the changes as suggested by your tutor otherwise they are likely to raise them again.

I'm not sure if any of this will help or not.


JC

coojee

Personally I find the BPP case study not particularly helpful and I wouldn't advise anyone to follow the structure of it as it doesn't fully meet the standards. If your tutor's told you to ignore it then do what they've said. JC has given you some good advice about doing what your tutor has advised you to do. It's never a good idea to argue the toss with your tutor over what you think should or shouldn't go in your report. At the end of the day they're the one who's assessing it and if they think something needs/doesn't need to be in there then they're right.

You mention attaching costs to recommendations and then went on to say how could you attach a cost to "resistance to change". Resistance to change wouldn't be a recommendation so you wouldn't be trying attach a cost to it. You could make a recommendation that staff may be resistant to and you could mention this in your CBA (or is this what you meant and I've read it wrongly?) It's OK to have a "cost" that doesn't have £'s attached to it in the same way that you can have a benefit that isn't monetary, eg some recommendations may improve staff morale and it's OK to put this in the benefit column. What the assessor should be looking for is that at least one recommendation (but preferably more) has been costed monetarily and the at least one benefit has been costed monetarily.

The Magician

One of the users really encapsulated the ICAS experience when they said it was like being asked to build a house, stringently adhering to requirements, without architect plans. I'm paraphrasing, but it adequately sums it up really.

I was told every recommendation had to be monetised.

I simply said that resistance to change is a by-product of automating a certain process and again, this intangible element would need to be monetised, apparently.

I do not see why the BPP book fails to meet certain standards. I advocate every one to use this book.

At the end of the day, all I am trying to do is pass this final unit and I am alarmed at the lack of resources, that is all.

Morpheus1980

Why are you alarmed at the lack of resources? Kaplan do a perfectly good ICAS textbook, which I used to draft my project. I have little accounting knowledge outside of AAT as my job is not based in this field, and the textbook proved to be adequate enough for me to complete the first draft.

I get the impression that you're over-thinking and making this project harder than you need to. It's not rocket science, and threads like this do nothing to dispel the fear that students have of this unit. Apologies for seemingly coming down hard on you, I don't mean to. I understand that you have time constraints and that this project is important to you and I wish you all the very best of luck with it, but I guess I'm just worried that students coming to do ICAS are going to see threads like this and panic needlessly.

*Prepares for onslaught*

Spamkebab

No onslaught from me Morpheus,

I too am not from an accounting or bookkeeping background and these posts about ICAS are a little worrying. I'm also using the Kaplan text when i start the project, so it's good to hear that the text is useful.

Thanks

Neil.

The Magician

Morpheus, I'm not going to get in your grill and hate.

I think really it just depends on your background and your level of education.

If you have a decent job with some reporting duty or you have a degree and have undertaken a dissertation then you could complete the ICAS unit more or less effortlessly.

Someone like me who has only ever held a brain-dead job, would struggle with this unit sinking hundreds of unproductive hours and fumbling around in the dark.

I do think the majority of the student community will struggle with this unit though and I do not think I am in the minority.

Although I do thank the AAT for stretching me in a way I never could have envisaged.

I'm just passionate about completing this qualification and moving forward with the next stage of my studies. I think caring so much is the mark of a committed student.

I have always got the impression from the Kaplan books, the author is just showing off and displaying how technically competent they are. The approach has never really been succinct or user-friendly.

Compare and contrast the approach with other books.

I really appreciate the comments though.