Exams and the new Student Information System

It’s almost April, and this winter term is the first time faculty and staff will experience exams with the new Student Information System (SIS).

“There is new and improved functionality with the SIS that will streamline the exam process for faculty and staff, as well as students,” says Linda Hull, manager of course registration, examinations and academic scheduling.

Process improvements

As in the past, the Examinations Office will continue to send every academic department a questionnaire to determine which courses require an exam. Then the master exam schedule is built in the SIS in conjunction with a package solution called Infosilem. The Examinations Office is in charge of getting the physical exams printed.

“Before, we had to produce a printing requisition and then manually include detailed printing instructions for every exam, which was very time consuming,” says Hull. “Now, we have a screen in Campus Solutions to input all the instructions and create the requisitions. It’s a much better process.”

Furthermore, Hull says, the Examinations Office will be able to print the exam envelope covers and exam rosters through the SIS.

“Previously, we mailed out paper copies of lists of all the courses offered in each department, with the names of the instructors and exam information,” says Hull. “Now, in this first phase of the SIS implementation, we’ll send departments an Excel sheet of the entire exam schedule, and departments can extract their sections of the schedule. Soon, in the next phase of the SIS implementation, we’ll send departments a query inside the SIS to allow them to access the exam schedule themselves.”

Teaching faculty and instructors will see their exam date in their My Faculty Centre page.

More fluid deferral process

One additional advantage of the SIS is its ability to process deferral requests.

“The new SIS is built so that when we get a request for a deferral, we can see more useful information in the system — such as the time and date when the original exam was scheduled, the student’s course grade and the instructor’s name, which the old system didn’t provide,” says Hull. “Even better, we have the ability to see whether the course is being offered in the next academic year and who’s teaching each section. We can then match the deferral exam to the instructor, if necessary, which it often is for Arts and Science courses. That’s a big advantage for us. In the past, we had to create an exam schedule manually for all of the deferrals.”

When deferrals are granted, Hull explains, the subsequent grade changes were noted on paper copies and manually sent to the Registrar’s office. Now it’s done within the SIS.

Student benefits

“Students will experience the new benefits of the SIS when they look at their exam schedule online, where they’ll enjoy new access to information,” says Bradley Tucker, associate vice-president of Registrarial Services and University Registrarial Services and University Registrar.

For the first time, students will be able to see their deferred exams, alternate exam schedules and special arrangements online in their My Student Centre dashboard, where they can also report conflicts for regular exams.

“And Campus Solutions shows students the exact location of their exam, instead of showing them all 20 exam rooms for a large course. It isolates their actual room number,” says Hull, who reports that soon students will be able to resolve their exam conflicts in the new system. “Eventually, all this exam-related information will be in one location. This will lessen anxiety around exams when students forget their examination room number and or the section of the course they’re enroled in.”

Less snail mail

“We used to send hundreds of paper letters about alternate exams and deferrals to all of the students and those letters had to be uploaded into the old system, printed out and filed,” says Hull. “But now students will get an automatic email on their dashboard with their exam schedule and everything they need to know about alternate exams and deferrals. It’s a smarter way to work.”

To learn specifics about the SIS support structure and more, consult the SIS Renewal Project Hub.