Next years timetable

Doop

Anyone else notice next years timetable which was mailed out to the student email?

Probably getting a bit ahead of myself by looking at it but...

They've moved the bleedin exams till after Christmas :mad: ... such a wreck the head, much better having them before xmas..

http://www.dkit.ie/files/2011.pdf

Panthro

the 3rd a fúckin' Jan, are they having a laugh?
That pretty much makes Christmas week our study week.
Honestly, what sort of numpty made that call? Most certainly not benefitting the overall results of the students marks, which should be the goal of the Institute at the end of the day.

Atomic Pineapple

Ah, one more reason to enjoy the fact I finished a two years ago

Hank_Jones

Would think it has something to do with the push for university status.

Whatever about it, they clearly didn't consult students, as I doubt any would go for it.

Atomic Pineapple

It was inevitable that this was going to happen but the 3rd of Jan is taking the piss a bit, proper universities have them after xmas but at the end of Jan.

Equium

draffodx wrote: »

It was inevitable that this was going to happen but the 3rd of Jan is taking the piss a bit, proper universities have them after xmas but at the end of Jan.

I thought they'd have them at the end of January too, around the same time as DCU have theirs in case the merger goes through.

Doop

Equium wrote: »

I thought they'd have them at the end of January too, around the same time as DCU have theirs in case the merger goes through.

Whats this merger all about?

I dont really get either how, what time of year the exams are have to do with the college getting university status?

Equium

There have been rumours that there will be a link established between DCU and DkIT in which the latter will be able to have their degrees conferred by the former. Basically it means you'll be able to get a university degree which many employers see as more prestigous. So it's not exactly a merger, although that has also been discussed to as far as I know.
The whole idea first leaked a few years ago and has cropped up again this year. Here's some links:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055255017

http://www.dkit.ie/content/download/7189/43008/file/DkITimes%20Volume%202%20Issue%2019.pdf

On the issue of having exams in January , the only difference that would make is that if the link-up does happen, then the exams would be at the same time for each college which would ease administration etc. If the exams in DkIT were set by DCU you couldn't have one set of students doing the exam before the others!
Other than that there's no connection between when exams are set and gaining university status. Trinity, for example, doesn't have Christmas exams at all.

Doop

^^^ thats interesting, wasnt aware of that.

Did anyone read the email yesterday? Have you ever read such complete rubbish in your life?

Dear All,

Following detailed discussion and inputs from the Academic Council and
others the academic calendar for 2011-2012 was recently agreed by the
Executive Board - see link below. There are a number of changes to the
traditional calendar and the most significant change is that the start
of the first semester will be later in September (by one week) than in
previous years and because of this the end of semester examinations will
take place after the Christmas holidays.

The later start will allow a full week of induction for first year
students when there are no other students present on campus and also
gives more time to complete repeat exam processing etc. It was felt that
the start to the current academic year was unsatisfactory in this regard.

I know that there are mixed views on the merits of examinations before
or after Christmas and that a majority of students prefer examinations
before Christmas but by placing them after Christmas students are given
more time to study.


Denis Cummins
President

http://www.dkit.ie/calendar2011
--

Mixed views? you'd be hard pressed to find a single student who thinks this is a good idea. Check out the link attached, its the most incomprehensible document ever created... purposely no doubt.

This 'more time to study' line is a joke, the week prior to the exams is when most people put in a huge amount of work... which is now post xmas and 2 days after new years. Seriously WTF??

I was half tempted to reply to the email, expressing my views, what do you guys think bad/good idea?

Atomic Pineapple

Doop wrote: »

I was half tempted to reply to the email, expressing my views, what do you guys think bad/good idea?

I would and also CC the student union on any emails you send and receive. I don't think exams after xmas would be a big deal if they were at the end of Jan giving students plenty of time to prepare (by having all or most of that month off, with a later finish up date before xmas) but having them start 2 days after new years eve is ridiculous. Even the most dedicated student will find it hard to study over what is meant to be a relaxing and family orientated break.

Slashman X

Sent an email to Mr Cummins earlier, it was the last line in the email that really pissed me off

Panthro

Sent him a reply, have a look, think I covered every angle.

I would like to voice a serious concern over the proposed start date for
the Christmas examinations.
Students will have very little time in which to prepare for the exams
should this proposal go ahead. Even the most dedicated student will find
it very difficult to study between Saint Stephens's Day and New Years Eve,
that is traditionally a festive period to be spent with family and
enjoyed.
This period is not being respected by such a proposal.

Also, a high number of students have part time jobs which help to keep
them in college during the year. Christmas week is an exceptionally busy
period for every business, and part time workers are needed more than ever
during that period. The proposal to begin exams at the start of January
would make it near impossible to achieve a high grade as study time would
be severely limited.

There are a higher number of mature students than ever before in the
college. Many such students have partners and children. The Christmas
period is one in which mature students should be spending with their
families in comfort, and not be in a room studying for the days leading up
to the 2nd January.

Finally, a high number of students rely on going into the library as it is
a suitable place in which to study. Will the library even be open during
the finish date in December and the start date in January?

Students have to travel from all over Ireland and beyond to attend the
college, has any considerations even been made for students from abroad?
The cost of flights home to their respective countries and then returning
at the start of the year are at an all time high over the Christmas
period, not to mention the possibility of adverse weather conditions such
as that of the previous years, which could seriously impede travel
conditions.

Consideration for all of the above should be taken seriously, an
alternative recommendation would be to start the examinations at the end
of January, giving the students time to rest and enjoy their Christmas
period in peace, then return to the college and have a two week period in
which to prepare for the examinations.

Thanking you,

cc87

The silence from the SU has being deafening, a week later and all they have done is say how annoyed they are with it, and that was hidden away on the website.

*Edit: Are they both on holidays??? could they not have waited about another month until the college was closed!

Panthro

I forwarded the email in my earlier post to the SU the same day, and haven't heard back. Must be on Easter hols.
Had a look at their website, all I can see is this:

James Clarke, President of DkIT SU said:

"This calendar will have significant repercussions on our members, and I'm absolutely outraged that we were not even notified of this decision, never mind consulted. To find out about the new calendar when I opened my emails on Friday and this simply isn't good enough for an Institute that is supposedly student centred."

"We will fight this decision tooth and nail as we know through various polls that our students prefer their exams before the Christmas break. I have called for a meeting with Denis Cummins and I will be seeking assistance from all class reps during the week. We have to assess what the situation is at the minute as we have no information on the decision, but we will be doing all in our power to overturn the calendar change."

David Branagan, Vice-President of DkIT SU said:

"From listening to the feedback over the past few days, it is clear that students' feel they should be assessed at the end of the semester, and not have to start the next one with exams. For the Students' Union not to have been consulted of this major change in the college calender is very disappointing.

I would accept this change if the college could show that it has been made due to an educational benefit for students. However, as of yet I have not seen any evidence of this. In the Student Services Annual Report 2009/10, which was sent to all students on March 18th, the Effects of Academic Calendar on Students were examined. The 1630 students surveyed were asked if they preferred exams before, or after Christmas, and the results clearly illustrated how the large majority of students prefer exams before the Christmas Break. Also, the conclusion/recommendation section, states "examinations to remain before Christmas in semester 1."

The Christmas period can actually be one of the most stressful times of the year so I simply do not believe that saying "it gives more time to study" is an adequate response to justifying this change. I'm not sure if the college have fully taken into account how this change will affect International Students, Students due on Placement, Students with Children, etc. I would welcome a meeting with the members of the Executive Board in order to further discuss the need for this change to be reversed."

Above taken from here

As said, we HAVE to fight them tooth and nail on this one. They are showing absolutely ZERO respect for us the students, the heartbeat of the college.

Slashman X

My response to that email

Hank_Jones

Slashman X wrote: »

My response to that email

Very nice.

The student union should really set about organising a strike for the start of next semester.

Only way anything is going to happen is if all students push for change.

cc87

Is the SU actually doing anything at all about this?? They havent said a word since that thing they put up the website over a month ago.

The VP just keeps posting complete rubbish on facebook, suppose they arent too worried since its not their exams that are going to be affected.

miniPhil

cc87 wrote: »

Is the SU actually doing anything at all about this?? They havent said a word since that thing they put up the website over a month ago.

When have the students union done anything about anything. There's a whole website just about the things they never did. I'm amazed they got re-elected.

Cpt Tremendous

cc87 wrote: »

Is the SU actually doing anything at all about this?? They havent said a word since that thing they put up the website over a month ago.

The VP just keeps posting complete rubbish on facebook, suppose they arent too worried since its not their exams that are going to be affected.

Personally I don't think the SU are competent. The college showed exactly what it thought of the SU when it didn't even consult them on the issue of the academic calendar.

I emailed Dennis Cummins myself highlighting my disappointment in how the college handled the matter, quoting the student services study which recommended that exams are not moved and study week is reinstated. he hasn't replied yet. I plan on posting that email to my blog tonight, I'll edit the link in later.

It says a lot when the college are ignoring firstly the recommendations of the report, ignoring the SU and finally ignoring the students. All we have heard is one casual, somewhat patronizing response from our college president and a statement from the SU saying they are working on it. Now they are ignoring well worded and well thought out replies from students, or has anyone received a reply yet?

Hank_Jones

Noticed that there isn't a chat option on the student union forum any more.
There is now a forum that requires people to register in order to post there.
Suppose they want to know who is posting comments on the forum, seems fairly stupid really.

I think they realise that anyone with half a brain is not in support of them and they are hoping to link email accounts to people
(can't be having any bad press on the SU website).

cc87

Well considering their re election campaign was only based on things they petitioned for or showed support for, they must have some experience at petitioning anyway.

I dont think they have the balls to go against the college president.


The problem is that once people get into the students union they get re elected by first years who are easily swayed by a few half decent nights out, not that the 2 lads have managed to to that too well either

Cpt Tremendous

Yeah they seem to be making it more complicated for students to post opinions. It took me a good few hours to receive my confirmation email from the forum when I signed up.

Probably brought in because of all the anonymous posting. People rarely put there name behind their views anymore so it hardly helps.

Here is my blog post/response to Denis Cummins email about the academic calendar, James Clarke was also sent a copy

Hank_Jones

Just thinking about this again.
Are lecturers going to be available to answer student questions around new years?
They're barely available anyway, with this put in place they will be non-existent around that time.

There's so many negatives about this it is unreal.

cc87

It pretty much means that we get no real break from college work from september until the end of summer exams.

I can see how that would make it easier for us alright :rolleyes:

Panthro

if the SU had any codge-ogs they would be organizing a protest rally outside Cummin's office.
Threaten to boycott going to class, any further participation with the college until we are heard. Have to remind these suits that we students are the ones keeping the place open, not them.

hdowney

merciful mother. i am hoping to get into dkit this fall and reading this i want to cry. frig off i do NOT want to be starting my christmas xams on 3rd january. either give them to me before christmas or at the end of january. i want to enjoy my christmas. go home and be with my fam, chill and not stress college. this is a complete joke:(:mad::(

cc87

Supposedly exams are now starting on the 7th instead of the 3rd. An improvement but not much of one. Still dont think its giving people enough time.

Slashman X

Starts on the Saturday now (also looks like there's exams on the Sunday, could be wrong though).

I love the way Denis Cummins' email said "Following representations ... from a
large number of students", no mention of the student union doing anything.

Panthro

Dear All,

Following representations on the Academic Calendar 2011-2012 from a
large number of students the Executive Board has agreed the postponement
of the start of examinations for semester 1 to 7th January 2012. The
revised calendar is available on the Institute website.
--
Denis Cummins
President
Dundalk Institute of Technology

Load of cock thats what that is. If they can knock it back a week, why not knock it back 3 weeks. Pure awkward, and the SU aren't exactly rallying for the cause. Very disappointing.

cc87

From what I hear, the reason the change was made was so that lecturers would have more time to correct repeat examinations in september. The poor souls were complaining they didnt have enough time.

They were saying that students who repeated exams werent registered in time, moodle wasnt working and timetables werent finalised. This extra week in september isnt going to solve any of those problems

Slashman X

cc87 wrote: »

From what I hear, the reason the change was made was so that lecturers would have more time to correct repeat examinations in september. The poor souls were complaining they didnt have enough time.

They were saying that students who repeated exams werent registered in time, moodle wasnt working and timetables werent finalised. This extra week in september isnt going to solve any of those problems

Yeah, if they sorted out their own infrastructure, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Aranious

Not many people know it, mainly because of DKIT's Stellar communication with it's students, but our Christmas exams have now been moved to after Christmas, this is after they held a vote of all students, a vote that excluded a majority of students for some odd reason, to see our opinion to this. I don't have the exact numbers but the percentage of the no vote was very large, but once again the college doesn't listen to the students, just like when we all apparently said we wanted our Halloween study week taken from us.

Personally I've had enough of the awful communication with and interest in the welfare of the students the college needs to know when people are angry about these kind of things, the Carrols building didn't have Wi-Fi for the first 12 weeks because it was decided that " it wasn't needed in the building" you know, the building with the IT and Computing students in it.

I don't know about anyone else but my own thoughts about this have 3 or 4 main points. First off, yeah , the Christmas exams were stressful as hell, but hey, we had a (relatively) stress free Christmas afterwards to look forward to, but now , if I was to follow my study plan that I had before the Christmas exams I'm going to be shutting my self in a room for 2 weeks.

Another concern of mine is students who live away from home, I don't just mean Erasmus students, though they fall under this heading too, what about those of us who are from other sides of the country, where traveling home and back for exams just isn't a possibility, do we miss spending Christmas with our family?

But I think the point that annoys me most is this, I know others have mailed the head of the college with similar complaints about time, and some have received, what I would class as down right insulting responses to it such as "we are aware of the students opinion on this but the decision has been made" basically, "we don't care"

Something I think many people will find interesting is this

http://ww2.dkit.ie/staff_and_admin/governance/academic_council/archive_of_minutes/2010/academic_council_meeting_no_114

It seems even the lecturers are displeased with the change in exams, and that's something I didn't even take into consideration, they have to write and supervise and correct these exams , missing out on their own Christmas.

So I think as a student body we need to stand up and do something, these next few weeks are going to be vitally important to us. College is going to be hard enough with grants being cut and our lives made more difficult without having to deal with the extra stress of after Christmas exams.

ShaShaBear

Even the staff is aware that the college is inadequate. Like I said earlier yesterday, registration dates for non first years has been available on the website (embedded three sections deep in Admissions) for over a month and not a single student has been notified of their time, date and venue for registration, a mere minimum of 6 days prior to the first date. I myself am on a BTEA scheme, and have to sign on the very same day I have to register. Until I receive my letter from the college giving me a time, there is nothing I can do to ensure I don't incur either a late registration fee or the loss of that weeks €188. Despicable. Never mind the fact that DKIT apparently re-set all of their student passwords, and neglected to forward on the mass text to everyone informing them of the procedures to take in order to get their new one. Meaning most of the repeat students have no access to Moodle or student mail.
Don't even get me started on the change at Christmas. It's going to be my first major holiday without my father since he passed away in March, and likely I will be forced to spend the entirety of it in my flat in Dundalk studying myself back into depression, instead of spending it at home with my family, giving them the love and support they need at a time like that.

Aranious

ShaShaBear wrote: »

Even the staff is aware that the college is inadequate. Like I said earlier yesterday, registration dates for non first years has been available on the website (embedded three sections deep in Admissions) for over a month and not a single student has been notified of their time, date and venue for registration, a mere minimum of 6 days prior to the first date. I myself am on a BTEA scheme, and have to sign on the very same day I have to register. Until I receive my letter from the college giving me a time, there is nothing I can do to ensure I don't incur either a late registration fee or the loss of that weeks €188. Despicable. Never mind the fact that DKIT apparently re-set all of their student passwords, and neglected to forward on the mass text to everyone informing them of the procedures to take in order to get their new one. Meaning most of the repeat students have no access to Moodle or student mail.
Don't even get me started on the change at Christmas. It's going to be my first major holiday without my father since he passed away in March, and likely I will be forced to spend the entirety of it in my flat in Dundalk studying myself back into depression, instead of spending it at home with my family, giving them the love and support they need at a time like that.

I'm actually one of those repeat students locked out too, disgraceful

Cpt Tremendous

Rather than just rant, see here for my two blog posts about this. I wrote these back when the announcement was made.

Part 1 - http://cpttremendous.com/blog/2011/05/12/letter-to-the-president/
Part 2 - http://cpttremendous.com/blog/2011/05/13/the-union-responds/

Can I also point out (without being a dick) that rallying the troops at this stage has a slight "to little too late" feeling about it. This was announced in early May, and myself and a few others did our best to raise awareness and get it fixed, more than the SU did.

Trouble is, the SU and college revised their decision and moved the exams back an extra week. Admittedly it's not a huge improvement, but it took quite a lot of pushing to happen. Now just 6 weeks before the new calendar comes into effect you want to make more changes.

Hopefully the exams can change but for the most part it's a waste of time. And if the college starts back at the later date, it will be better to have the exams held after xmas rather than before. As the latter will greatly reduce the length of the semester and increase pressure and stress.

glenbl54

Yeah but starting back later is not that good either, especially for people with final year projects that need all the time in the world for their projects, and now rather than starting back at a nice date getting approval early on and then having all of Christmas for doing their projects now loose out on all that time. They now have to wait extra weeks to know if they can go ahead with their projects, loose out on valuable time cause they'll have to study.

Cpt Tremendous

Not see how this is an issue tbf. All students who have final year projects this year, myself included will be working on it during the semester. From what I know from having a few friends who have done 4th year projects as recent as last year, they had to generate a proposal and pitch their project to two interviewing lecturers, at a set date. Once the project was approved they could begin work.

I imagine that this set date will be adjusted according to the new calendar and that the final due date will be adjusted also. These specifics haven't been published because they are finalised once the semester begins.

Edit: you will also have the remainder of January off for holidays so you can work on your project. Those 3 weeks off to do project work shouldn't make a difference by their positioning at either the beginning or end of the month

Aranious

You're probably right about it being too late to do anything about the exams now, if you remember I tried to do my part in may too, but work got in t way, I think it's more about the colleges treatment of students in general. I mean the exams are one of my biggest gripes with the college at the moment, but as ShaShaBear said they reset the passwords with a total failure to communicate this with the students, now some people I know got texts but not everyone, and including myself in this, a lot of us are now locked out of Moodle and Webmail.

Maybe at this stage I'm just shouting in the dark but I still feel it needs to be said to the college again and again and again until they at least start consulting the SU on major matters because as you pointed out in your blog, they weren't even consulted about this.

Slashman X

Did you send this on to Denis Cummins?

Aranious

Slashman X wrote: »

Did you send this on to Denis Cummins?

aye

emmbay

I don't think it is that bad if the exams are at the start of January though becausee semester 2 doesn't start till the 30th of January, so if you only have a few exams you should have a couple of weeks off before you start back classes normally like... Well thats my idea of it..

Hank_Jones

emmbay wrote: »

I don't think it is that bad if the exams are at the start of January though becausee semester 2 doesn't start till the 30th of January, so if you only have a few exams you should have a couple of weeks off before you start back classes normally like... Well thats my idea of it..

Would imagine someone who has to travel from Donegal for a couple of exams would have a different view of it though.

If the weather is bad also, which it most likely will be, that will put people at risk of missing exams.