Scheduling final exams - Registrar

Overview

The final exam schedule, maintained by the Office of the Registrar needs to be created twice a year, for the spring semester and for the fall semester.

In the summer semester, finals are given during regular class time by each course, and during the part of term dates for the course.

The spring and fall semester final exam schedule should be created immediately following the completion of the priority registration period for the upcoming semester (so the spring schedule should be created around Thanksgiving of the previous fall semester, once registration is complete. The fall schedule should be created in late April, once the fall/summer registration period is complete).

Once the final exam schedule has been created, the Class Scheduling team works with IT to test the final exam schedule against active student registration to find the best possible final exam schedule. Once testing with IT has been concluded, the final exam schedule is posted by the Class Scheduling team on the Registrar’s Website.

Create the final exam schedule

Copy the template from a previous like semester in a new excel spreadsheet.
Update headers, contact information, dates, and links to department websites for the
correct semester.

Update the final exam sessions

Next, update the FINAL EXAM sessions by rotating the day and time from the previous
semester
- CEP has asked our office to rotate the final exam time slot for each CLASS
  Meeting pattern to ensure that all faculty and students have an equal chance to
  have exams at all times during the final exam period
- Evening exams will ALWAYS be the equivalent evening time slot, no rotating is
  necessary for evening exams (Monday evening classes for example will always
  have the equivalent Monday 7:30pm-10:30pm final exam time slot, and so on).
- Saturday classes and Sunday classes (any time) will always meet during the
  classes start-end time on the equivalent Saturday and Sunday of final exams
  iv. Rotating final exam timeslots therefore applies to the MWF 6am-4:59pm, TR
  6am-4:59pm and Department wide exams
- Confirm with each department that they plan to offer department wide exams
  and for the same courses as listed in the previous semester.
- Foreign language department wide exams are all always on the same final exam
  time slot
- Math is always its own independent final exam time slot.
- Tips and Tricks:
  - try to front load the final exam period when rotating (earlier days in the
    final exam period should always be assigned to the highest traffic time
    slots) so there are less students taking exams at the end of the period
  - Try to rotate exam time slots in a way where students who register for
    classes back-to-back will not always have back-to-back final exam time
    slots as much as possible

Test with IT and adjust

Once the drafted final exam schedule has been, open a ticket with IT to do the testing
(you can @ stephanie Bautsch, Scott Zitzmann, Denise Patrick) to schedule a meeting to
review the final exam schedule.

In the first meeting with IT, make sure that the script is updated properly to reflect the
new final exam schedule, check that the excluded schedule types, courses and schools
are correct
Then review the results of the script to find opportunities to either swap final exam
slots, or adjust the Start time ranges to reduce the amount of student conflicts
- There will always be some final exam conflicts, but the goal is to get the fewest
  possible
- This process will take some time and at least 2-3 meetings with IT.
- In between meetings, class scheduling team may need to reach out to individual
  professor’s whose courses have a high number of conflicts to find out their final
  exam plans. If their course will not use the final exam slot (maybe they have a
  project, or a paper to turn in rather than an exam) then that course can be
  excluded

Publish on our website

Once the final exam has been re-arranged to find the best possible distribution for
students, we can get the final exam published.

The final exam schedule should always be published before the next term starts