Examinations
Running exam registration in the timetable
Where the student information system does not take exam registrations, somebody has to: who sits which exam, on which date, and who said so. Here is what the rules have to be, where the exceptions go, and what the examiner needs on the morning of the exam.
First, the dates
Registration starts where planning ends: students can only register for dates that are fixed and whose rooms are booked. Which dates those are is a scheduling problem of its own — how many dates each course gets, how far apart, never two exams of the same year on one day, never two exams with shared students at once — and building an exam timetable covers it. Registration should open on published dates only, and only on a student’s own courses.
Rules a student is held to
- A deadline at the end of a day. Registration closes so many days before the exam, withdrawal a little later; both at the end of that day, so that “until Tuesday” means all of Tuesday.
- One date of a course at a time. A second date is refused with the first one named, and withdrawing frees it.
- The student records’ own word. Fees, prerequisites, the number of attempts: those are decided in the student information system, not in the timetable. The timetable reads its answer — a file with one line per student — and a “no” stops the registration with the reason and the office to ask.
- A reason for every refusal, in words. “Registration closed on Tuesday”, not an error code.
Exceptions belong to the office, with a reason
Every exam period has the student who was in hospital on the deadline and the vice-dean who approved a late registration. A system that simply refuses them sends the office back to paper. The office has to be able to register or withdraw anyone, past any deadline — after being told plainly which rule it is setting aside — and the reason it gives has to stay with the registration, so that the question in June has an answer.
The same goes for capacity. More students registered than the rooms seat is something to be told about, with the ways out: add a room, split the exam into a second sitting, or accept it because half of them never come. Refusing the student who registered last is not one of them.
When a date moves
It will. A date that moves keeps the students registered on it, and the office should be asked before moving one that has registrations, with how many. A date taken out has to show as cancelled to every student who had it, so they choose another date rather than turn up to an empty room.
What the examiner needs
On the morning of the exam: the list of who registered, the seats in the rooms, a column to sign and a few empty lines for the student who comes without registering — the office decides about them afterwards. Taking presence the way it is taken at lessons, with the attendance code the examiner already uses, turns the signed sheet into a record. And afterwards every registration, withdrawal and presence goes back to the student information system as a file.
Doing it in Wise Timetable
Wise Timetable does all of the above in the standard licence, presence by QR code included: the exam periods module plans the dates and books the rooms, and exam registration runs on the students’ phones with these rules, the office’s overrides and the examiner’s list — by e-mail the day before, where the institution sets a time. An institution whose student information system already takes registrations keeps it there and uses only the dates. Exam periods and registration, and the guides for the office, the students and the examiners.
Related
- Exam periods and registrationThe module: periods and rules, every clash in words, publishing, registration.
- Building an exam timetableGaps, clashes and adjustments in the examination schedule.
- Exam invigilationSupervisors, seats and rooms on the day.
- Planning clinical rotationsThe other half of a medical school’s year.
Want to see this working?
Book a 45-minute online presentation and we will walk through it against your institution's own scheduling problem.