We seem to be getting more students complaining about having 2
exams on one day during the main summer exam period (although
I don't believe the numbers in this position are significantly greater
than in previous years). Do other institutions give their students any
commitments about examination load/pacing?
Warwick's degree courses give students a very high degree of
option choice, across departments and faculties as well as within
departments (especially in the final year of undergraduate courses).
This of course results in extensive clash lists for a lot of papers (it
is not unusual for some larger papers to accumulate 80+ potential
clashes with other papers). The 4 week June exam period
incorporates papers examining 1160 modules and a total of 43,450
candidate places. Further restrictions on scheduling are of course
finite room capacity and the requirement to conduct final and first-
year exams earlier in the period than intermediate-year papers.
All this means that is logistically impossible to produce a timetable
which gives no student more than one exam on one day. The best
general constraint that we can build into it is that no-one gets more
than 3 papers over 2 days (and occasionally this has to be
overruled). We also try- as far as possible, anyhow- to avoid
compulsory core courses being placed in adjacent slots.
I'd be grateful to know how other colleagues who have to cope with
similar data complexity/course structures see this issue.
Joe Taylor
Academic Office
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL
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