Overview

Purpose: The Registrar’s Office is responsible for creating the final exam schedule for each fall and spring term on the Storrs campus and supports the regional campuses in the creation of their exam schedules.

Academic departments indicate exam requirements for each section using CLSS.
Using those requirements, the Registrar’s Office creates the final exam session in EMS.
Once created, the exam schedule is published in Student Admin and appears on student and faculty schedules. Changes to the schedule in EMS are updated daily in Student Admin via an API.
A report of exams across all campuses is created in SADM and published on the Registrar’s Office website. The report is refreshed daily.
Target Population: UGRD GRAD PHMD RHAG

1 Overview | 2 Background | 3 Critical Info and Prep | 4 Instructions | 5 Related Articles and Links

Background

Final exams are held during the one-week, bylaw-defined exam period starting the week after the last day of classes each fall and spring term. Exams are held during standardized two-hour blocks during exam week. Each day during exam week has five blocks going from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a 30-minute gap between each.

Exams are grouped into each block based on the class meeting time during the semester to minimize student conflicts. Classes are mapped to each exam block using final exam grids:

Except for common exams, exams should be scheduled in the same room in which the class was held during the semester whenever possible. Room assignments for common exams are typically provided by the department; common exams are only scheduled for certain ACCT, CHEM, MATH, and PHRX classes.

Common Exams are exams for multiple sections of the same class held in the same classroom. For example, the Chemistry department will schedule the exams for multiple lab sections of CHEM 1127Q in the same room during the CHEM Commons exam block even though the discussions do not meet together during the semester. The schedules for these exams are not based on the class meeting times; instead, the department determines which room and which common exam block to schedule the exam.

The fall final exam schedule must be published by October 1. The spring final exam schedule must be published by March 1.

While this article does not include a comprehensive list of exam policies, the policies listed here are important to know when creating the exam schedule, maintaining the exam schedule, and fielding questions from students and faculty.

Instructors are not required to administer a final exam for every class, but any exams that are administered must be held on the day and time set by the Registrar’s Office. Instructors may not request specific exam blocks.
Instructors may request an early start or late end to a final exam to give students additional time to complete the exam as long as the additional time is not mandatory for students. Extended times will be recorded as simple room reservations in EMS; the official exam time should not be adjusted to avoid confusion for students.
Instructors may not administer final exams during the semester, including the last week of classes.
Instructors may administer online, asynchronous exam that are due during exam week, but students must have the ability to take the exams on their own schedule if the exam schedule has not been set by the Registrar’s Office.
Instructors may not administer in-person exams for classes that are entirely online. If any component of class is in-person, in-person exams are permitted.
Instructors may request that their exam be held in a different room or in multiple rooms, subject to room availability.
Exams may not be scheduled during reading days, but instructors may schedule time for make-up exams on reading days to accommodate students.
Students with bunched finals should work with the Dean of Students office via the Finals Rescheduling Request Form to reschedule exams; this typically does not require the Registrar’s Office to adjust the final exam schedule as it is done on an individual basis.
For most of the semester, the Registrar’s Office can only accommodate classroom reservation requests during exam week for exam-related events, such as review sessions or make-up exams. To ensure there is adequate space available for these events, the Registrar’s Office can only allow reservations for other event types starting the Monday after Thanksgiving Recess in the fall term and after April 15 in the spring term.
When making reservations for events not related to exams, the Registrar’s Office should use discretion to avoid scheduling potentially disruptive activities near rooms where exams are being held. Events should not be scheduled within 30 minutes of the start or end of an exam. To control the types of reservations that may be made, classroom reservations should not be available during exam week via the EMS web app.

Critical Info and Prep

The following process(es) must be completed prior to following the instructions below:

Exam preferences should be complete and accurate in CLSS. Registrar’s Office will send a reminder via the Academic Scheduling LISTSERV shortly after the start of the term with exam information.
Details of all CHEM, MATH, PHRX, and ACCT common exams should be provided by departments.
Any changes to the Final Exam Schedule Template in EMS should be finished (this is only necessary if we wish to change the template; the existing templates can be applied unless there are substantial changes to the Final Exam Schedule Grids).
The exam session creation process MUST NOT be started until after Day 10 to ensure that enrollments have stabilized.

Instructions

1 Setting Standard Final Exam Settings in EMS (Storrs Only)
2 Setting Common Exam Settings in EMS (Storrs Only)
3 Creating the Final Exam Session in EMS (Regionals Start Here)

Setting Standard Final Exam Settings in EMS (Storrs Only)

On the Storrs campus, it is best to start with Common Exam setup before updating exam settings for all other classes.

Before the Final Exam Session can be created in EMS, exam settings must be set for all courses. While CLSS is used to collect final exam preferences from academic departments, the data from CLSS is used to populate two User Defined Fields in EMS that can be used to assign preferences to sections in bulk in EMS.

Setting Final Exam Requirements in CLSS

Throughout the scheduling cycle, schedulers for the academic departments use CLSS to indicate whether an exam is required for each section. See Setting Final Exam Requirements in CLSS in the UConn Knowledge Base for more information about how exam preferences are managed in CLSS. That data is then bridged to Student Admin.

For all sections except lectures with linked discussion or lab sections, exam preferences are recorded using the Final Exam field in CLSS (CLSS > Section Editor > Final Exam):

When bridged to Student Admin, the value in this field updates the FINAL_EXAM field in the CLASS_COMPONENT table. To view the preference of an individual section, navigate to Student Admin > Main > Curriculum Management > Schedule of Classes > Adjust Class Associations > Class Components > Final Exam.

Final Exam field in Adjust Class Associations in SA

Lectures with Linked Discussions or Labs

Lectures with linked discussions or labs use the 9999 value in the class association to allow them to be associated with any other section. As a result, these lecture sections do not have a dedicated class association and, as such, exam preferences cannot be managed via the Final Exam field in CLSS. Instead, schedulers set exam preferences for these sections by adding one of two Section Attributes:

Final Exam: Lecture requires final exam
Final Exam: No final exam for lecture

Bridging Exam Preferences to EMS

Course information is bridged from Student Admin to EMS via a data view, and the view has been updated to populate two User Defined Fields in EMS: Final Exam Preference and Lecture No Exam.

To set exam preferences for a course in EMS, navigate to EMS > Academic Planning > Courses > Academic Browser.

Select the course you wish to update and then, in the Academic Browser menu, navigate to Tools > Set Final Exam Settings.

Screenshot of EMS Academic Browser used to browse for course dates which enables user to set final exam settings from Tools menu.

Exam Settings for Standard Exams (Storrs Only)

For all sections except those with common exams, choose from one of two settings. For sections that do not require an exam, select Final Exam Not Required. For sections that do require an exam, select Require Current Room to ensure that the exam is scheduled in the same room in which the class was held during the semester.

Using Filters to Update Final Exam Settings (Storrs Only)

In order for the the Final Exam Preference filter to display accurate exam preferences, this data must be accurate and set correctly in CLSS. The values in this field come directly from CLSS so, if you are not sure that your exam preferences are recorded accurately in CLSS, you will need to set exam preferences manually.

Use the Academic Browser to filter on certain criteria so that you can update the settings for many sections at the same time.

First, navigate to EMS Academic Browser > Filter > All Fields and then select Course Dates > Final Exam Not Required and Course Dates > Final Exam Require Current Room.

For each of these filters, select Does Not Equal for the condition and Yes for the value. Using these filters together will ensure that the courses listed in the results are only those for which final exam settings have not already been set.

With those filters in place, navigate to EMS Academic Browser > Filter > All Fields and select Course > Final Exam Preference. For this filter, select Equals for the condition and N for the value.

To view the filtered results, select Get Data, which will bring you to the Results tab. Be sure that the “Browse For” window is set to Course Dates.

Be sure to set all sections of ENGL 1007 to not require an exam.

On the results tab, select all the course dates that are displayed, then navigate to Tools > Final Exam Settings. Select Final Exam Not Required and then select OK.

Next change the value of the Final Exam Not Required filter to “Y.” In the Results tab, select all displayed courses, and then navigate to Tools > Final Exam Settings and select Require Current Room.

Be sure to review the preferences set by departments to be sure they are valid. For example, a department may indicate that the discussions sections of a course should have a common exam but also fail to indicate that the lecture does not require an exam, which could result in two exams being created for the same course.

Because online asynchronous and “by arrangement” classes do not have meeting times, exams cannot be created for them in EMS. While most classes using these modes do not have exams, the small number that do will need to be added directly to Student Admin. See the Adding Asynchronous Exams to Student Admin section for more information.

Setting Common Exam Settings in EMS (Storrs Only)

For each section that will have a common exam, the department must indicate two pieces of information: (1) which exam block the exam will be scheduled in; and (2) which room the exam will be scheduled in.

Because there is only one CHEM common exam block, the first piece of information is not necessary for CHEM common exams. The ACCT and MATH departments should specify which common block to use. PHRX courses are scheduled throughout exam week, so the department must provide the details for each section.

As you are setting common exam settings, it is helpful to have the following filters set to exclude sections for which final exam settings have already been set:

Final Exam Not Required does not equal Yes;
Final Exam Require Current Room does not equal Yes;
Special/Common Exam does not equal Yes.

ACCT, CHEM, and MATH Commons

In most cases, multiple sections of each ACCT, CHEM, and MATH courses will be assigned to the same room, which will be specified by the department. To filter by subject to work on one department at a time, navigate to EMS Academic Browser > Filter > All Fields > Course > Subject and select the subject from the list, then select OK and Get Data.

Most of the ACCT sections will be combined with sections of their equivalent BADM courses.

In the Results tab, select the sections that will be scheduled in the same room together, then select Tools > Final Exam Settings

Creating Final Exam Schedules in EMS