As some of you may have been aware, the planned dates for T3 at the end of this year were not compatible with the start date for T1 2024 in that results would not have been released until the end of week one of Tri-1. Combining a Board of Examiners week with the first week of T1 2024 sounds like a bad time for everyone, and would have negative impacts for students and for downstream processes.
So, the eAssessment Team has offered to compress the T3 exam period, in order to provide the university with an extra week and allow for the release of T3 results prior to T1 teaching start.
Briefings have been provided to Heads of Schools, SEC Convenors, and Assoc Deans T&L as well as our new Executive Principal for Education Futures, Suzanne Crew, and our offer has been accepted as the best way forward.
- Note that the 2024 and Draft 2025 Principal Dates also include ALL exam periods compressed into just one week.
- This will be business as usual from T3 (or until the calendar model changes) in order to provide some sort of break between trimesters.
- The Trimester 2 2023 exam period, in 2.5 weeks, will NOT be compressed
So what’s the plan?
We will hold exams during the first week of the Tri 3 exam period rather than holding them over the usual two weeks.
To do this, we will knowingly create the exam schedule with some student clashes.
Normally, we grab a data set of every student’s actual enrolment combination and work to create a schedule where no individual students have direct clashes and less than 2% of students have two exams on one day, etc. A compressed exam period timetable will include some clashes, in the context that students can use the exam availability windows to manage their own clashes and/or exam overload.
Students will be advised (by us) how to manage this, and to make contact with us if they still have unresolvable issues.
We will then work directly with Unit Coordinators to ascertain the best option for that student.
The flexibility that we have available within our online exam supervision platform is extremely useful in this regard.
How can I support this?
One key way to reduce the chance of your students experiencing any clashes will be to hold any deferred/supplementary/special exams PRIOR to the following exam period.
We can hold exams at any time really, as long as we are provided with enough notice. We encourage you to hold deferred exams ASAP after the original exam. This is very simple if you are using the same exam activity, just let us know what you would like. If using a new exam activity, you can set this up with us by providing clear instructions and details to olxforstaff@une.edu.au with a minimum of four weeks’ notice.
If you haven’t already, please take this extended notice period to plan and design exam assessments that facilitate flexibility and ensure academic integrity at the same time. Many already do this with randomisation and the use of question banks. If you would like further advice on this aspect of assessment design, please send your request to LearningDesign@une.edu.au
Our colleagues in the Learning Design Team are very busy with Project Uplift and building the new myLearn system, so please give them as much notice as you can if you would like some advice or assistance.
As many of you will be aware, we also facilitated a compressed exam period for T3 last year.
Please note, that the technical issues we experienced during T3 last year had no relation to the fact we were working with a compressed exam period.
We do not expect a repeat of the technical issues experienced earlier this year.
