"The preparation for exams has no beginning or end – we are constantly working on this"
Get to know the University administration
We present employees at the school's University administration in a series of articles. This week we talked to Erika, Kristin, Maria and Malin, who work at the School's Office of Student Affairs with the school's exam administration. Read about the preparation and post-processing of the exam period, when they all got sick simultaneously and how they relax after the hectic weeks.
The fact that it has just been an exam period has probably not escaped anyone. Several of our colleagues at the University administration have jumped in as exam invigulator at some point. Still, for Erika Porander , Kristin Linngård , Maria Lilja and Malin Björk , who works at the School's Office of Student Affairs' exam administration, the period is preceded by intensive pre-work and post-processing.
All four work as educational administrators for first and second cycle education at EECS. They work with exam and education administration, result reporting, other student matters, degree projects, and with booking and salary of exam invigulators. They have slightly different tasks during the exam period and are divided between the school's two campuses.
During the exam period
An exam period means a busy time with a high workload for everyone in the group who handles between 350-400 exams and partial exams per year. Kristin elaborates:
"An exam period is preceded by an intensive period of preparation where we book shifts, open exam registration, and check scheduling and room bookings. We collect exam statements from examiners, prepare registration lists and hall placements, and pack mountains of boxes of material that will then go out to the exam halls."
The group also accepts applications for grade raising, and late registrations and assists incoming and outgoing exchange students with any writing that needs to be done from their home university or at their exchange university.
It is a busy period for the group:
"When the exam period starts, we are often on campus from six in the morning until eight in the evening, depending on when the exams end."
"We pack and scan exams continuously during the period, hand out and receive all exam material from our invigulators, and solve any urgent problems", Kristin says.
Called in sick
Sometimes colleagues have to step in as exam invigulators when there is a crisis. Erika talks about January's challenges:
"During the academic year's most significant exam period, January 2022, almost the entire gang fell ill with COVID-19, and in addition, many exam invigulators called in sick. Our managers and colleagues had to jump in and help us with exam handling and proctoring. Sometimes we had to guide them over the phone. It was tough, but we are grateful that our colleagues contributed their working hours to support us!"
The post-processing
When the exam period is over, a hectic period of handling the exams follows. The group scans exams, organises lists, archives, handles any remarks, arranges payment of the exam invigulators' fees, and receives and scans corrected exams while starting to prepare for the next exam period.
"We also take care of other tasks such as degree projects, results reporting and student matters. The exam preparation period has no real beginning or end; we are constantly working on this. We continuously follow up on the scheduling of various examination forms. It is often a recurring problem that exams are scheduled with the wrong format and fall outside our documents or that they need to be scheduled at all," explains Malin.
Relaxation
After the exam period, the group prioritises relaxation in different ways.
"It is essential to ensure that we recover when we can. An exam period means many days when we live in a work-eat-sleep routine. Erika likes to sit down with a thick Fantasy book when the energy is there, and Kristin enjoys picking up a good PC game or new series," they conclude.