At Bucknell University, a groundbreaking tool has been integrated into the registrar’s office to enhance the creation of the final exam schedule.
This innovative solution aims to balance the needs of students with the preferences of faculty, helping to ease the common challenges associated with exam scheduling.
Understanding Student Needs
For students, the final week of the academic semester often translates to a surge of anxiety as they juggle last-minute assignments and cramming for exams.
Research from a Student Voice survey conducted in May 2024 by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab underscores these pressures; it revealed that 31% of students would prefer a restructured exam schedule designed to allow more time between their finals, ultimately improving their academic performance.
The task of organizing an effective exam timetable demands extensive planning and careful consideration, which can lead to complex schedules that aren’t always student-friendly.
Recognizing the opportunity for improvement, a collaborative team of faculty and students at Bucknell University developed a tool to facilitate this scheduling process.
This tool takes into account vital factors relevant to students, instructors, and the university, with the aim of reducing scheduling conflicts.
Development of the Scheduling Tool
Typically, the finals timetable at Bucknell is formed before the add-drop period wraps up, making it challenging to detect student conflicts until the semester is underway.
Moreover, the university often groups large courses into sections with a shared exam time, rather than sticking to the original class meeting times, which adds another layer of complexity.
Samuel Gutekunst, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Assistant Professor of Data Science, has actively sought a solution to these scheduling dilemmas.
In 2023, he received the green light to develop a resource for the registrar’s office.
Partnering with assistant professor of mathematics Lucas Waddell, former Bucknell professor Thiago Serra who now teaches at the University of Iowa, and a dedicated team of student researchers, the idea took shape in the spring of 2023.
In the ensuing months, the student team crafted a Tableau dashboard that harnessed historical enrollment data to create visual heat maps.
These maps spotlighted trends and highlighted courses with overlapping enrollments, thus drastically improving the registrar’s office’s ability to visualize enrollment trends.
Building on this initial success, the students created a user-friendly web application known internally as the “exam scheduling tool.” Plans are in motion to officially name it the Bucknell Exam Automated Scheduling Tool (BEAST) in future documentation.
Avoiding Common Scheduling Pitfalls
A survey conducted at Bucknell in spring 2023 proved instrumental in identifying key factors essential for an optimal exam schedule.
The team pinpointed four major scheduling pitfalls to avoid:
- Conflicting exam schedules
- Having three exams within a 24-hour period
- Consecutive exams
- An evening exam followed immediately by an early morning exam
- Four exams lined up within a span of 48 hours
With the new web tool, staff can seamlessly log in, click “run,” and produce four different exam timetables.
Additionally, the registrars now have the flexibility to adjust schedules using a drag-and-drop feature, which provides immediate reports detailing how many students are affected by potential conflicts.
This capability allows for real-time comparisons of different arrangements.
Since incorporating this tool into the exam scheduling process, the university has seen a significant drop in the number of students facing scheduling challenges.
In the spring of 2023, 1,182 students reported major inconveniences, but by spring 2024, this number had plummeted to just 432.
Gutekunst emphasized that the initiative resulted in a decrease in the percentage of students confronting significant scheduling issues, dropping from about 30% to approximately 11%.
This improvement fostered a more supportive environment during exam week, allowing students to focus better on their studies.
The reduction in students with three exams scheduled within a mere 24 hours has been particularly noteworthy, decreasing from 243 in spring 2023 to just 54 in spring 2024.
Importantly, Gutekunst clarified that the intent behind this initiative is not to replace registrar staff but rather to empower them by streamlining processes that historically consumed a lot of time.
The tool is designed for usability by the registrar’s office, allowing staff members to prioritize different scheduling factors as needed, thus optimizing their overall workflow.
Currently, Gutekunst and his research team are gearing up for publication and are preparing to release the website as an open-source resource, potentially benefiting institutions far beyond Bucknell University.
Source: Insidehighered