Shorter exam period from next year ?

Last year in Academic Board the policy was passed by the university to shorten the exam period from 5 to 3 weeks as currently each faculty decides their own timescales for conducting exams. These change also claims to improve the student experience and centralise information. However the union does not believe that the proposed to the calendar achieve this and have been opposed to the introduction of a shorter examination period since the ideas was first raised in academic board.

A lot of University staff are not happy with this decision as its a major move for some faculties who previously and still currently need longer than 3 weeks to conduct the exams in optimum conditions.

The propose changes will have an adverse affect on students to achieve academic success at MMU due to the following factors.

• Less Revision time between exams
• More Exams in one day
• Evening exams
• Weekend Exams
• Reduction in teaching time

1. Evening and weekend exams may result in some students risking losing permanent part time work.
2. Students who commute and do not live near to the university will be put at risk due to evening exams as they will be travelling home late
3. Students may be forced to choose a university that does not ask them to compromise their faith. Various faiths have different needs which needs consideration
4. Students with children/dependants will require changes to childcare. As childcare is very much a daytime weekday provision this could present a barrier to student parents and be perceived as hidden course cost.

The students union fails to see the benefit to the individual students or the university in these changes. The union is proud of the diverse student demographic of our University and believe that we have an opportunity to demonstrate to current and future students that we put their experience first by tailoring our exam periods to suit their needs, rather than those of the university or space utilisation figures. This may prove to be a key differentiator to other universities who only pay lip service to the idea of putting students first.

We have put this message across to university through a working group which is currently looking into this issue and will aim to convince how damaging the proposed changes can be to their career prospects.