Handling Student Appeals (Request Remark)

When a student believes their assessment or observation has been incorrectly marked, they may contact you to request a review of their result. Nimbu's Remark feature allows you to re-open a completed task, review the student's submitted work, and assign a corrected result without requiring the student to resubmit anything new.

Because a remark re-opens marking that has already been finalised, it carries its own documentation requirements and a clear audit trail. All previous feedback and results are preserved for your reference during the re-marking process.

What's Covered in This Article

This article explains the full remark workflow from the trainer's perspective.

• What Happens When a Student Requests a Remark: How students raise concerns and when a remark is appropriate.
• Initiating the Remark: How to open the remark process in Nimbu.
• Reviewing and Re-marking: What you can access and how previous work is handled.
• Previous Attempt Preservation: What is retained and what changes during a remark.
• Timeline Tracking: The sequence of events and audit trail created.

Who can do this: Trainers with marking permissions can initiate and complete a remark on a completed assessment or observation.

What Happens When a Student Requests a Remark

Students do not have a dedicated button in Nimbu to formally request a remark, they raise the concern by contacting their trainer directly, typically by email or through their RTO's communication channel. When a student reaches out:

• Review their concern carefully against the original marking criteria and the student's submitted work.
• Determine whether the concern relates to a genuine marking error, a misapplication of the marking guide, or a disagreement with the standard itself.

A remark is appropriate when:

• You believe a marking error was made, for example, a question was incorrectly graded, feedback was applied to the wrong question, or a result was recorded in error.
• A student raises a specific, substantiated concern about how their submitted answers were evaluated against the criteria.

A remark is not appropriate when:

• The student simply disagrees with the competency standard or what the assessment requires. This is a curriculum concern to escalate to your RTO's administration team.
• The task contains only self-marking questions (Multiple Choice, True/False, Selection). These are graded automatically by the system, there is no trainer marking to review, and the Remark option is not available for these tasks.
• The task is currently in a revision or resubmission state. A remark can only be initiated on tasks with a final status of S (Satisfactory) or NS (Not Satisfactory).

Initiating the Re-mark

Once you have determined a re-mark is warranted, initiate it from the student's completed result screen.

1. Access the student's completed work. You can navigate to it from either:
   • Class Management: locate the student, open their progress, and select the relevant result.
   • Student Management: open the student's profile and navigate to their results.
2. Open the completed assessment or observation. The result screen displays the Final Result badge, the marker's name, and the date and time it was marked. The task must have a status of S or NS.
3. Click the kebab menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the result screen, next to the Timeline button.
4. Select Re-mark from the dropdown.
5. The Re-mark modal opens. The modal description reads: "Re-mark to correct a grading mistake or make any necessary adjustments. All previous results and feedback will be kept, allowing you to make revisions without starting over."

6. Enter a reason in the Reason* field (placeholder: "Write reason..."). This field is mandatory — it cannot be submitted blank. The reason documents why the completed task is being re-opened and forms part of the audit trail.
7. Click Start Re-mark to confirm.

You are automatically redirected to the marking screen to begin the re-marking process. The task status changes from S or NS to TBM (To Be Marked) immediately.

Note: The Re-mark option is only available for tasks with a final status of S or NS. It is not available for tasks in TBM, IP, or any other in-progress state.

Reviewing and Re-marking

Once the remark is initiated, the full marking interface opens with all previously submitted work available for review.

What you can access:

• The student's original submitted answers to all questions.
• The marking guide for each question.
• All previously entered feedback and results retained in full for your reference.

What you can do:

• Review each question and the student's answer against the marking criteria.
• Update individual question results (S/NS) as needed.
• Revise or add feedback on any question.
• Navigate to the Summary screen to set a new final result.

Finalising the remark:

From the Summary screen, select the new final result, either Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory, and click to confirm. You can also add overall feedback before submitting.

Previous Attempt Preservation

The Remark feature is designed to correct marking errors without affecting the student's submitted work. Understanding what is preserved and what changes is important before proceeding.

What is preserved:

• The student's original submitted answers exactly as submitted. No answers are cleared or altered.
• All previously entered feedback and question-level results retained on screen for your review and available for revision.
• The submission record the remark does not create a new attempt or alter the attempt count.

What changes:

• The task status changes from S or NS to TBM (To Be Marked) as soon as Start Remark is clicked. This is visible to both the trainer and the student.
• Once the remark is completed, the final result is updated immediately. The updated result replaces the previous one and is visible to both parties straight away.
• The student receives an automatic notification that their result has been updated.

Timeline Tracking

Every remark creates a documented record in Nimbu that captures the full sequence of events. This audit trail is available for compliance review and provides accountability for all parties.

The documented reason entered at the point of initiation, along with the full marking history is recorded and retained. This ensures a clear record of why the task was re-opened and what outcome was reached, which is important for your RTO's compliance and audit obligations.

Related Articles

• Requesting a Remark
• Marking History & Timeline