Timetable Chaos

mloc

Once again the exams office has made a total balls of the exam timetable, most 4th year science students have been royally screwed... examples being Physiology have 9 finals in 5 days, Biochemistry have 4 days of 2 in a row (e.g. 8 exams in 4 days), chemistry have all 4 exams in 3 days, some joint honours students have two exam running at the same time.

If someone doesn't lose thier job over both the delay in getting the timetables out and the utter balls they've made of them, it proves how utterly down the drain UCD administration is going.

robotfridge

i agree. Im 2nd arts and ive 6 exams in 5 days straight.
50% of my degree is this year. Great

rainbow kirby

Same ****, different year tbh.

Tan Princess

They seem to have the last week given over to repeats. Surely they should be first giving the people doing exams for the first time more time to study?

dirtydress

^ Exactly! I would have thought they would push finals as far back as possible to give us the most time to prepare...guess that was asking too much and those who failed once get treated by the system.

Stepherunie

You're non modularised therefore you're just an anomaly (no offence meant by this btw, i'm non modularised too).

Though what do you expect when the bloody Academic council think that this is the last year when they will have non modularised students?!?!?! Have they forgotten all about 4 and 5 year degrees???

katarin

mloc wrote:

If someone doesn't lose thier job over both the delay in getting the timetables out and the utter balls they've made of them, it proves how utterly down the drain UCD administration is going.

i dont think thats fair.
its only a provisional timetable. it can change. and considering the chaos the exams office have to sift through with the all-over-the-place horizons degree, i think the fact that a timetable was drawn up at all is a major feat - have you seen the amount of subjects that have to be catered for? bar going through every single student in the college by name and subject and creating personalised timetables, theres not much else they could have done. i know its ****, its my final year and my timetables not great, but when are exams ever ideal?

mloc

katarin wrote:

i dont think thats fair.
its only a provisional timetable. it can change. and considering the chaos the exams office have to sift through with the all-over-the-place horizons degree, i think the fact that a timetable was drawn up at all is a major feat - have you seen the amount of subjects that have to be catered for? bar going through every single student in the college by name and subject and creating personalised timetables, theres not much else they could have done. i know its ****, its my final year and my timetables not great, but when are exams ever ideal?

Why is everyone in UCD so accepting of pathetic standards?

There is an Exams department. It is thier responsibility to organise exams. There is several staff DEDICATED to this task.

Exams come at the same time every year. They have access to all neccessary information. The horizons system was implemented two years ago. It was not a suprise this year. There are finite number of exams to be set, and a finite number of available dates and locations. It is by no means an impossible task.

Final years student should be accomated first and foremost, as these coming exams represent their degree mark. Instead, it would seem, they were treated as an afterthought. The timetable was released three weeks late, with no solid explaination.

Explain to me exactly how that does not constitute a level of utter incompetence?

katarin

im not saying they deserve an award, just that their job isnt the easiest.

Red Alert

it wouldn't be easy for me to do a job i'm incompetent to do.

emeraldstar

katarin wrote:

i dont think thats fair.
its only a provisional timetable. it can change.

exactly!! it's only a 'provisional' timetable. At this stage of the year it should be a pretty final version of where we're supposed to be in less than 3 weeks time.

emeraldstar

emeraldstar wrote:

in less than 3 weeks time.

I'm really happy all my exams are on campus in Trinity this year. I remember going out to the RDS last year (took a year off last year) and seeing random Trinity students in one section, UCD students in another section, and the accountants something or other having their exams in another section of it! There were clumps of very confused students everywhere to be seen...

So for anyone who will be out in the RDS this year, remember this simple rule: Our invigilators wear cloaks.

Life was so much simpler for everyone else when you guys weren't modularised!

pretty*monster

I'm begning to come around to the idea that in-house exams would be a much better idea.

FionnMatthew

3rd Arts, G&RCiv & Philosophy.
All 10 exams in 8 days.

14th - 1 exam
15th - day off
16th - 2 exams
17th - 1 exam
18th - 1 exam
19th - 1 exam
20th - sunday off
21st - 2 exams
22st - 2 exams

All of my finals in just over a week. Thanks a bunch UCD. Evidently, you have a whole lot of respect for us. Admin deserves a Cho Seung-hui for this.

Vorsprung

FionnMatthew wrote:

Admin deserves a Cho Seung-hui for this.

You wanna think about that one again? That's seriously ****ed up.

I had a big exam today, a clinical worth 40% of Psychiatry, one of my final subjects. Not sure whether it was in-house or Exams Office run, but it started about 40 minutes late and there was little information during the exam (and I don't mean they didn't give us the answers!). No summer exams per se for me, just another clinical at the end of June.

FionnMatthew

bigjimthefirst wrote:

You wanna think about that one again? That's seriously ****ed up.

So did the exams office.

tribulus

I have two languages clashing at the same time.

Has anyone got an email address to contact the Exams Office with, I know they said it will be sorted automatically but quite frankly I don't trust them at all to sort it.

I'm also semi-modularised (whatever that means) so I again am not very hopeful.

FionnMatthew

Assessment & Logistics Unit
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4

Tel: +353-1-716-1555
Fax: +353-1-716-1198
Email: assessment@ucd.ie

Notorious

One of my classes isn´t listed at all! Why could they not just sort out the timetable earlier, say release a provisional timetable during March and start sorting out the mistakes from there. Trinity have their timetable around two weeks now, and their exams start after ours.

snickerpuss

3 of my exams are still not there.
Irish don't seem remotely bothered to fix it.
I got "Ah sure it'll all be grand, i'm sure you'll know when you have them before they start".

I just want to know when and where my exams are, its not that mad a question. I can see this not getting fixed for quite a while considering it took them from Sep-Feb to fix my registration problem.

dajaffa

robotfridge wrote:

i agree. Im 2nd arts and ive 6 exams in 5 days straight.
50% of my degree is this year. Great

No this year either counts for 33% counting your best 6 modules of the year, or 50% of all your modules this year. Which one it is depends on how you do next year, with your degree weighted whichever way is better for you.

mloc

Just got an email, all 4th science are going in-house.

Guess that sums up the incompetence of the exams office. The Science office is basically fed up of them, and we have been advised to ignore the exam's offices timetable's from now on as Science will be publishing thier own.

edit:

Just to like to add, fair play to the Science office and our lecturers for not putting up with it.

tribulus

No sign of an email for me

My 2nd year Summer exams were much less stressful when they were in the Science block, same seat every time and same rather hot invigilator for when you can't think of an answer!

emeraldstar

dajaffa wrote:

No this year either counts for 33% counting your best 6 modules of the year, or 50% of all your modules this year. Which one it is depends on how you do next year, with your degree weighted whichever way is better for you.

What??!!!!
did they change it? We were told a few months ago that this year and next year were 50-50 but only our six best modules of this year were to be counted......they can't change that without informing us?!!! noooooo

Stepherunie

SU rowed a lot with the admin about your year because they felt it was unfair that you'd only been informed after the year began of your degree weighting so they agreed for it to be changed.

Can't believe they didn't bother to tell you.

emeraldstar

Stepherunie wrote:

SU rowed a lot with the admin about your year because they felt it was unfair that you'd only been informed after the year began of your degree weighting so they agreed for it to be changed.

Can't believe they didn't bother to tell you.

they did tell us it had been changed for our year only, so that only our six best modules would count for the 50%
but dajaffa's post seemed to imply that it had been again changed since then so that now all 12 modules count as 50%..or alternatively 6 counting as 33%
I'm so confused now!!

Stepherunie

Hmm I think they way Dajaffa is saying it is this:

You do 12 modules this year (I think)

They'll take your best six results from those 12.

Next year when you've finished your third year exams they'll take your best 6 results then too.

Then your 2nd year results will account for either 33% of your final degree mark or 50% of your final degree mark,with the other 66% or 50% respectively coming from your third year results. Basically they use the weighting that gives you a higher degree mark overall.

emeraldstar

huh. that's quite different to what we were told, and on which i was basing my progress.... ****e

Stepherunie

Now that's what I think it is. I'm not in arts so ask at the programme office mayhaps???

That's what i've gleamed from council or somewhere or other.

Blut

No, thats completely wrong. Youre doing 12 modules in second year, the top 6 of these will count towards your degree. These 6 modules will be equally weighted with the 12 third year modules. Your degree will be averaged out from these 18 modules.

That means your top 6 second year modules are effectively one third of your degree. This is the situation in arts anyway, I cant comment for other faculties.

emeraldstar

i thought the top 6 were one half of the degree.

whoops

but that's what I got from this, which we got around the start of this semester:

Further to our recent communication regarding the calculation of your GPA, please note the following amendment, which has been agreed is to the greater benefit of current Stage 2 students:

1. Your GPA will be calculated over BOTH Stages 2 and 3 on a 50/50 basis - on the 6 best module grades from Stage 2 and all module grades in Stage 3, weighted evenly. This one-off arrangement applies to students currently in Stage 2 only.

So did they change it since and not inform us, or have I understood it wrong? If it's the former, that is unacceptable; if the latter, whoops again

Stepherunie

I'm pretty sure it's changed. But contact your arts programme office or Brian Doyle at brian.doyle@ucd.ie

emeraldstar

F U C K
that's not fair
If it was unfair not to inform us until so LATE in the first place, it's doubly unfair not to tell us AT ALL that it's been changed again at this stage!!
I'm gonna have to go find out...sigh
Thanks guys

Sarn

The timetabling is a nightmare, and the final year exams should take priority.

As I'm sure you've seen, exams have in excess of 2000 modules to organise in the space of a month. In the old days there were no electives (essentially) so clashes would have been few and far between. Can you imagine the logistics organising all the permutations to accommodate everybody? Glad I don't work there.

humbert

Sarn wrote:

The timetabling is a nightmare, and the final year exams should take priority.

As I'm sure you've seen, exams have in excess of 2000 modules to organise in the space of a month. In the old days there were no electives (essentially) so clashes would have been few and far between. Can you imagine the logistics organising all the permutations to accommodate everybody? Glad I don't work there.

If only there was some way they could have seen this coming and organised an adequate system to deal with it.

Steibhin

Never mind having 6 exams in 5 days. I still have 3 exams that have been scheduled twice for different days. For example Public Policy is on both the 19th and the 26th. I emailed the exams office on Tuesday asking for clarification but of course no reply.

These people are being paid money (our money) to produce a timetable. Don't not feel sorry for them.

mloc

Just had it confirmed to us at a meeting today, all 4th year exams for science will take place in the science building, probably the zoology labs. They will be organised by the science faculty and our lecturers will arrange the timetable, which we will have a confirmed copy of this evening.

@Tribulus : The lecturers are now working hard to fix up your timetables (3rd pharm/sci), talking to a few of them this morning they are pretty pissed off with the exam department and will make sure you guys get sorted out.

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

humbert

mloc wrote:

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

Agreed, impressive!

Stepherunie

That's class. Well done to the science lot. Living with a few final science people - I'd say they'll be a lot calmer now.

So glad my summer exams are in house too. God knows what they'd have done with us seeing as we needed a projector...

tribulus

mloc wrote:

@Tribulus : The lecturers are now working hard to fix up your timetables (3rd pharm/sci), talking to a few of them this morning they are pretty pissed off with the exam department and will make sure you guys get sorted out.

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

Confirmed here too. Our lecture tomorrow is going to be used to sort out a decent timetable for people. I was kind of looking forward to being finished on the 19th but on the other hand having more time to study between exams is always welcome.

Go Conway Staff!

humbert

tribulus wrote:

Go Conway Staff!

It seems to be the whole of the science faculty, just to give credit where it's due.

tribulus

Agreed, I was just being selfish and thinking of myself

Does anyone know what the Exams Office has to say about this?
Are they bothered at all or is it just less work for them?

humbert

I'd say they're delighted.

Jonny Arson

emeraldstar wrote:

1. Your GPA will be calculated over BOTH Stages 2 and 3 on a 50/50 basis - on the 6 best module grades from Stage 2 and all module grades in Stage 3, weighted evenly. This one-off arrangement applies to students currently in Stage 2 only.

Hmm that's worded differently than the email we recieved when the change was made. Dunno where that 50/50 has come from.

Dear Student

Please note that following discussion at the BA programme board, honours
in the BA, BSocSci, BA (Computer Science) and related BA programmes will
be calculated based on the best 6 modules from Stage 2, and ALL modules
from Stage 3, with the modules equally weighted. This one-off
arrangement applies to students currently in Stage 2 ONLY.

Yours faithfully

Danielle Clarke
Bairbre Redmond

Vice-Principals
College of Arts and Celtic Studies/College of Human Sciences
University College Dublin
Dublin 4

AFAIK It hasn't changed since it was changed in November.

Simply degree is calculated on 18 modules,
Best 6 modules from 2nd year + All 12 modules from 3rd year

emeraldstar

Jonny Arson wrote:

Hmm that's worded differently than the email we recieved when the change was made. Dunno where that 50/50 has come from.

Yea that's weird, that handout's what was handed to us in a French class

woop

its kinda un believable that Im in 1st sci and my timetable is as follows
17th
19th
23rd(x2)
29th

you might say that 1st year is relatively un-important in the scheme of things, yet some people in 4th year have 10 exams in 8 days, bit silly if you ask me, oh yeh and admin decided not to schedule my physics for an exam, I only have had contact with admin 2 times, start of the year and the enrolment mess, and now with a lack of a timetabled exam, a patern seems to be emerging

dajaffa

Final timetable due on the 1st of May, granted little will change in it. Wa-hey

themole

When coming up with the timetables the first and foremost priority is avoiding clashes. Everything else comes after that.

Science doing its own timetable ehe. How will that work? Won't there be students taking science subjects as well as subjects from other faculties? How would they do the timetable to avoid clashes.

The only way i would see around that would be to not have anyother exams on at the same time.

Btw, there is nothing stopping any school doing its own exams whenever it likes, as long as they don't clash with the weeks used by the exams office.

Chakar

I got this email from the Registar.

Dear Student,
A provisional timetable for Semester 2 examinations was released to you last Monday 23rd April. A number of errors, omissions and problems have come to light, notified to us by staff and students.

We are currently working very closely with Heads of School to correct any errors in the timetable. It is our objective to publish the final, complete and accurate timetable next Tuesday evening, 1st May.

We have also had some complaints that examinations are scheduled too close together. We have been able to spread the examinations out in a small number of cases, but in most cases it is not possible, within the constraints of the timetable, to change the pattern of examinations.

All staff concerned had planned to be in a position to publish a final timetable at an earlier date. I fully understand the anxiety and frustration that has built up as a consequence of the delay and can only apologise on behalf of the University for this situation.

We have made significant improvements in the arrangements for the exams with regard to venues, allocation of seat numbers, security, refreshments and transport between exam venues. We are working closely with the President and Education Officer of the Students’ Union on these improvements. I will write to you next week, when the final timetable is published to provide further details.

Regards,

Dr Philip Nolan

Registrar and Deputy President

Vainglory

I think it's interesting that he said the words "I am sorry" in his email to all the class reps but couldn't bring himself to do so in the email to the rest of the students.

Too much to ask?

I know he's not directly responsible for the timetable but as the VP for Academic Affairs the buck's gotta stop somewhere..

This is what he said in the email we got..

"We are confident that we will have corrected errors and omissions in the timetable and aim to publish the final timetable next Tuesday evening 1st May. I understand that anxiety and frustration caused by delays and errors in the publication of the timetable: I am sorry they occurred."

tintinr35

Vainglory wrote:

I know he's not directly responsible for the timetable but as the VP for Academic Affairs the buck's gotta stop somewhere..

why does the buck have to stop anywhere??
they ballsed it up and now they have apologised......no ones life is really going to ruined because of an exam timetable,
maybe we should just, dare i say it......get over it and move on???????