New and updated Academic Policies and Procedures for 2025/26

Four Assessment-related Policies and Regulations:

  • NEW Late Submission of Assessments (Extensions) Policy – this new Policy applies to undergraduate and postgraduate taught course students. It outlines procedures for dealing with assessments that are submitted after designated deadlines, the consequences of late submission of assessments, and the procedures for granting extensions. It also responds to the legal requirement to facilitate non-standard reasonable accommodations. Students with LENS report permitting flexible assessment deadlines will need to be offered a default extension of a week (if it is practical to do so):
    • without the requirement for the student to provide further/additional documentation in support of the reasonable accommodation.
    • without the student having to apply for the extension.

Module co-ordinators should identify, in SITS, the students on their modules with an entitlement to these accommodations, and contact them offering them an extended submission deadline if it is possible to facilitate that. Useful how-to guides are available on the Disabilities Service website, providing step-by-step instructions on how to access LENS reports in SITS and how to generate lists of students that have LENS-based reasonable accommodations. Information on the types of accommodation that can be granted to students in Blackboard Ultra and guidance on how manage these accommodations can be found on the IT Services website.

  • Return of Coursework Policy – first developed in 2014, this Policy has been renamed the Return of Feedback on Assessments Policy. The Policy now clarifies that students should be provided with clear information on what constitutes feedback and where that feedback can be obtained, and that the deadline for return of feedback on assessed work is proportionate to the size/scope of the assessment, the size of the class, and the assessment type. A distinction is also made in the Policy between deadlines for return of feedback on formative vs summative assessment and the timelines for both are outlined.
  • Assessment and Academic Progression Policy – this Policy has been updated to be in line with other assessment related policies (e.g. Extensions) and with the principles of inclusivity. The importance of assessment design in upholding academic integrity is stipulated and the facility to ask a student to verify/validate that they have achieved the required programme or module learning outcomes via an in-person meeting or viva is now included.

Separately, the undergraduate compensation regulations have been updated in the Calendar Part II (page 37, section 61) to address inconsistency in their application and to clarify that all students, who for whatever reason (deferral to the reassessment session or repeating a module off-books) do not rise with their year after the annual examination session, are required to repeat any modules in which they gained a qualified pass.

Four Admissions-related Policies and Procedures have been updated for 2025/26:

  • A NEW Student Garda Vetting Policy articulates existing regulations in the Calendar
  • Admission and Transfer Policy amended to reflect updated processes for determining applicants’ eligibility for admission and fee status, limitations on deferral of offers and possible grounds for refusal of offers.
  • Recognition of Foreign Qualifications Procedures updated to reflect developments in the recognition of foreign qualifications in Trinity and the Irish HE sector, and the process for assessing applications from individual students presenting qualifications for which Trinity does not yet have set criteria.
  • English Language Policy updated to reflect Trinity’s new English Language Framework 2024/25.

Other updated policies:

  • Remote Supervision of Postgraduate (Doctoral) Students Policy – this Policy is now applicable to ‘off-site’ rather than ‘remote’ supervision arrangements, and it applies not only to PhD students but to research masters’ students and students on the D.Ed. track. The Policy has been renamed the Off-site Supervision of Research Students Policy.
  • Programme Suspension and Cessation Policy – the scope of the Policy has been expanded to include other programme elements (modules, strands, subjects etc.) and to clearly articulate the approval route for proposals to suspend or cease these elements, outlined in a new Appendix 1.
  • Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Policy – this Policy has been amended to more accurately reference Trinity’s Learning Management System (LMS) (Blackboard Ultra) and the name of the Policy has been changed to the Learning Management System (LMS) Policy.​
  • Programme Handbook Policy and handbook templates are reviewed annually to make sure that they are fit-for-purpose, and have been updated for 2025/26 to reference the College Statement on Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI in Teaching, Learning, Assessment and Research (2024).
  • Programme and Curriculum Design and Approval Policy – this Policy was first developed in 2016 and has been updated with a detailed outline (attached to the Policy as Appendix 1) of the approval process for programme and curriculum changes (e.g. modules, strands, subjects, programmes, micro-credentials).

The full suite of Academic Policies and Procedures can be found here.