Saturday Examinations - University will give special consideration for Saturday exams
Report of Meeting with University Officials Regarding Saturday Examinations – Monday 24th October 2011
The University has agreed to develop specific processes to assist students who are inconvenienced by Saturday examinations. The University has committed to having a draft proposal for NUSA to comment on by Monday 31st October.
Saturday Examinations
The NUSA education officer (Deahnna Richardson) and NUSA president (Heather Richards) met with University representatives (hereby referred to as ‘the University’) regarding the weekend examination survey.
The University informed us that Saturday examinations were expected to be a permanent feature of future examination periods, as it was impossible to complete all examinations within the given time frame without holding some examinations on Saturdays. However, we were successful in agreeing to develop a specific process to assist students inconvenienced by Saturday examinations. The University has committed to having a draft proposal for NUSA to comment on by Monday 31st October.
This process will address issues that do not fall within the current limits of special consideration including:
- public transport;
- sport commitments; and
- work commitments.
The University also agreed to recommend to Planning, Quality and Reporting that questions from the survey regarding examinations are included in student feedback surveys.
Background Information on Examinations
The University outlined some of the challenges they face timetabling examinations.
There are over 56000 examination sittings per semester, and for each student they have the following parameters to work within:
- A limit of two examinations per day;
- A limit of three examinations in a 48hour period;
- No three (3) hour examinations at night; and
- A clash free timetable
In addition to these, there are specific requests from academics to hold examinations in a certain time-frame during the examination period. There are two main grounds for such a request: firstly, marking intensive courses and those with a large number of students enrolled must be early in the exam period to allow time for marking; secondly, academics that travel to conferences must be able to mark before they leave.
Campus Specific Examinations
Ourimbah
Every exam period, Ourimbah examination venues are at risk of flooding
We were asked the following question:
Q. Would students prefer examinations to be rescheduled during the formal examination period, or during the supplementary examination period?
Port Macquaire
Examinations are held off-campus at a racecourse. There are no known issues.
Sydney
Examinations are outsourced and held at Wentworth Park
City Campus
There is no suitable venue at the City campus for examinations. The town hall is prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain as a venue, as is the entertainment centre.
Callaghan
Great Hall only seats approximately 350[check] for an exam.
During trimester three, examinations do not have first priority for the use of the Great Hall, external schools do for graduation ceremonies.
University Trials and Initiatives to Date
The Newcastle Jockey Club (NJC) was used as a venue for off-campus examinations.
Lecture theatres have been used, but they are not convenient for open-book examinations, or examinations which contain short or long answer responses. In addition, there are logistical problems such as the spacing of students, left- or right-handed students.
The green room is currently being trialled for trimester and supplementary examinations.
Proposal: A purpose-built examination facility be built
This facility’s primary purpose would be to host UoN examinations, as a priority. Rather than being a room which is turned to suit examinations, it would be a building which is turned to suit other needs outside examination periods.
The idea was floated that examinations may move from hand-written to electronic formats and this facility could be designed with this in mind.
Proposal: To shorten some examinations to 1.5hours
A large number of 2 hour examinations are completed before time and as such an idea to shorten some examinations to 1.5hours was discussed.
Increasing student numbers
The University is predicting a 10% increase in student numbers following the uncapping of demand, but at the moment are only seeing an increase in nursing students.
However, retention rates are increasing which increases the number of students sitting examinations.
Off-campus examinations
We spoke briefly around this issue.
There will be no examinations at the Jockey Club this semester.
Saturday examinations
The University has committed to not holding any future examinations on a Saturday, if it falls on a long weekend, due to negative feedback last semester.
As mentioned before, the University has agreed to formulate a specific process to assist students inconvenience by Saturday examinations.
However, the University flagged the fact that they do not have the capacity to reshuffle the exam timetable for large numbers of students once it has been finalised. Therefore, if a process to cope with Saturday examinations were developed, it would not be possible to reschedule these exams within the formal examination period and as a matter of logistics, they would fall within the supplementary examination period.
Special Consideration:
The University has said that they work very hard to arrange an examination timetable that achieves the aforementioned parameters, and satisfies academics and students. However, they are aware that it is difficult to have an examination timetable that suits everybody. Whilst the University acknowledges that the current Special Consideration process would cover many of the reasons cited by students for being inconvenienced by Saturday examinations (including being unable to make child care arrangements), they are committed to working with NUSA to improve the current situation.
The following issues were discussed:
Religious Commitments
Students should follow the normal special circumstance procedure, but generally, Saturday Mass for Catholics does not fall within the definition of inflexible religious commitments because of Sunday Mass.
Unavoidable Commitments
Weddings and baptisms are not guaranteed by special considerations.
Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. directly if there is a problem.
Public Transport
Public transport was identified as being a significant problem was students for Saturday examinations, night examinations and off-campus examinations.
It was agreed that the University would follow-up issues of Newcastle buses with facilities management.
The University Officials we met with today were:
Gail White (Academic Registrar)
Carmel O-Regan (Deputy Academic Registrar)
Julie Powter (Coordinator)
These people worked on this:
 |
||
| Deahnna Richardson | Heather Richards | Mansel Ismay |
Comments (0)