Timetable Daily: Examination Module

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:56 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Exam module is comprised of several steps:
Examination Documents

Timetable Daily has an advanced and tightly integrated exam scheduling utility. Exams can be automatically generated from classes. These exams can be scheduled to the exam period timetable automatically or via drag and drop, and clash checking prevents student conflicts with any examination schedule proposed.

When exams are scheduled, they are automatically managed as daily events. This has the effect of automatically scheduling the required students to their designated exams, as well as extracting them from any classes that may still be running.

IMPORTANT: When an exam block is created, all classes for the selected year level(s) will be cancelled for the entire duration of the exam block, even if no exams are scheduled on particular days or in particular sessions. If it is intended that some classes will still run during the exam block, the cancellation event that is automatically created will need to be edited via the Events tab.

Timetable Daily automatically sets up a required cover event of both x no of ‘teacher/s’ and one ‘room’ for each exam, to facilitate the exam covers. You can then specify the actual teacher/s or room that will be used at any time, or specify additional/less teachers or rooms are required for each exam – even without designating them specifically at the time.

The Exam module is comprised of several steps:

Step 1: Exam period overview

Step 2: Exams

Step 3: Students

Step 4: Scheduling

Step 5: Exam supervision and rooming

By navigating to Daily>Exams all existing exams can be viewed or a new examination period can be created. There is also an option to edit or delete an exam period.

Please Note: Deleting an exam period cannot be undone. Generally old exam periods should be retained for reference, as they link to exam supervision assignments for teachers.

Step 1: Exam period overview

In Step 1, we define all the general parameters around the exam period, such as dates and times, sessions, rotations etc.

Step 1
1. Exam schedule name	The name of the currently selected exam period. This name cannot be changed so ensure it is correct before going to the next screen.
2. Year/s	Select one or more year groups to associate with the exams – e.g. Year 11 & Year 12 may be doing their exams together.
3. Rotations	Select the semester associated with this exam period. This defines which classes are used to create exams, as only those in the selected rotation(s) are used here. Changes to the Rotations once a schedule has been generated will cause the schedules to be undone. If the existing schedule needs to be replicated it will need to be done manually so it is advised to take a copy of the schedule prior to changing the dates.
4. Max students per session	If you have a limited number of places available per exam session, enter the maximum number of students who can sit in any one session. If there is no limit, leave this at 0.
5. Exams may be scheduled on	Allow Weekend exams. Check this if you want to schedule some exams on a weekends. Allow exams to be scheduled in holidays. Check this if you want to schedule exams in the holidays. Note: This option is only for Daily view, It will not sync to third part systems. If you want the Weekend or holiday dates that have exam in them then please make the weekend and holidays as a teaching day in Date mapping and if you don't want other Year level to not Sync to other third party when it is a School holiday then In the Event create a Pupil Free Day event and then sync to the third party system.
6. Start/End date	Enter the first date and last date of the exam timetable. Note: Changing the start and end dates once a schedule has been generated will cause the schedule to be undone. If the existing schedule needs to be replicated it will need to be done manually so it is advised to take a copy of the schedule prior to changing the dates.
7. Publish Date	The publish date is the date when the exam details will become visible on student timetables in Timetable Daily. For supervision details to appear on teacher timetables, the exam publish date must be reached AND the covers published for each day of the exams. Prior to the publish date, only administrators will see exam details on student and teacher timetables. Note: For teachers to appear for the scheduled examinations in the third-party system (Compass), the following prerequisites must be met: Timetable Daily Event Date: the date associated with the Timetable Daily Event must be accurately set and aligned with the intended examination schedule date. Publish Covers Screen: The covers must correctly be published on the covers screen for the exams.
8. Duration	Enter the default duration for exams e.g. 120 mins. You can vary the duration of individual exams later.
9. Setup/pack up time	Enter the time required. This can be set to 0.
10. Sessions	There are three default session options. Enter the start time for each exam session. You can vary the start time of individual exams later via the 'Events' module but this entry will be the initial default for all exams. If additional sessions are required, click on 'Add more sessions' To change the start and end times of individual exams, go to Daily > Home > Events, select the date of the exam that needs changing, edit the relevant exam event and adjust the start and/or end times. These new times will now appear on the exam schedule in the exam module for the relevant exams. They will also appear on the printed exam schedule. Note: When customising session times, the Grid structure period timings from the timetable file may impact the timings of the exams when syncing to a third party system (Sentral, Compass, etc..). There will be no issues in the Timetable Daily timetable. Changes to the Session times once the schedules are generated, the schedules will be undone and one will need to regenerate the whole examination schedule again.
11. Create study exams	This option will create a study exam for each session of the exam block. Study exams can be managed automatically or manually. See 'A note about Study exams' below.

12. Generate exams

There are now two options available for generating the number of exams for each subject. Select 'Create an exam per subject' if only 1 exam is required for the whole cohort for each subject. This could be used when all students are together in one large room, a hall for example. Select 'Create an exam per class' if multiple exams are required for each subject. This could be used if each class will be in a separate room for the exam.

Schools with multiple rotations would need to select the rotations associated with this exam period. This defines which classes are used to create exams, as only those in the selected rotation(s) are used here.

Step 2: Exams

This screen is used to add/delete or modify the exams which have been created. To add or delete an exam in this screen, right click in an exam row and select the required option - Add exam row above, Add exam row below, Remove this exam row.

Step 2
1. Color	Shows the faculty colour of the exam. Timetable Daily selects the default faculty colour for exams. To change a colour, click in the colour cell and select an alternate colour from the colour palette
2. Exam name	These are the subjects that students have been allocated to in the timetable. If an exam is not required for a particular subject, select that exam row, right click and select 'Remove this exam row'. Additional exams can be added by right-clicking a cell and selecting 'Add an exam row above' (or below). This column can be sorted alphabetically by selecting the column header. IMPORTANT: Exam blocks can only overlap if exam names in each block are unique. For example, if you want to start a Year 11 exam block before a Year 12 exam block is finished you will not be able to have an exam with the same name in each block, e.g. Geography. Adding a year level prefix for exams is recommended to avoid this issue, e.g. 11Geography and 12Geography.
3. Duration	Shows the duration of the exam in minutes. Initially all exams will have the default duration you specified in the parameters. To change the duration of an exam, edit the number in this column.
4. Classes taking exam	All exams are linked to specific classes (by class code) for the selected year, as per the Tes Timetable F6 class data screen.
5. VLink	Exams can be linked to other exams via the VLink column. This will ensure that the selected exams will be scheduled at the same time. When an exam is entered in the VLink column, this exam will have the VLink column populated automatically with its linked exam.
6. No. of students	Shows the number of students required to take that exam. This column is non-editable as it is based on student enrolments in the timetable.
7. No. of teachers	The number of teachers required to supervise the exam. This is populated by default with a ratio of 1 teacher per 24 students but can be edited.
8. Room	The main room in which the exam will be held. If this room is normally occupied at the scheduled time, it will appear on the covers page to be re-roomed. This room will appear on the exam schedule but will not show on the covers page nor appear in the Supervision and rooming tab as being assigned to the exam but it will be displayed on the supervision report.
9. No. of Rooms	The number of additional rooms required for each exam. By default this is 1 but can be edited if more rooms are required. If no additional rooms are required, this should be zero. The actual rooms that will be used as additional rooms are added via the Supervision and rooming tab or the covers page for the required date. Exam rooms can be freed up by using the room swap feature when assigning rooms.

Step 3: Students

This screen displays a list of students with their respective exams. It helps you check that we have correct information about who will attend which exams, or to make manual adjustments such as adding some students into an exam (when they were not previously registered in the class for any class linked to that exam), or removing some specific students from an exam. Once complete, all exams should have a complete and accurate record of the expected students who should attend them.

Step 3
1. Name	Contains an alphabetical list of all students registered to that year. You cannot create or delete students in this view.
2. Year	Year level in which student is registered.
3. Exam name	Shows which exams each student needs to attend, based initially on their class membership. You can add or remove each student from each exam or add a new exam. To remove a student from an exam, hit the “x” symbol. To re-add the exam, hit the “+” symbol. To add a new exam hit “+Add student to exam”.
4. Save/ Cancel	Any changes that are made in this window need to be saved to ensure they remain.

IMPORTANT: Once the exam schedule has been saved, changes made to student enrolments in classes in the etz file will NOT update automatically in the exam schedule after a sync. These changes must be managed manually. In the student tab, any exams for subjects in which the student has been recently enrolled will appear but the exam must be added manually for the student. Any exams for subjects in which a student is no longer enrolled must be manually removed.

Step 4: Scheduling

Select this step when you have completed all the exam setup steps, and want to construct the exam timetable. The screen will open with a draft schedule completed. If study exams have been created, they will appear at the bottom of each session cell.

The following actions can be performed:

Student clashes - Timetable Daily will display any student clashes with a red cone. Clicking on a session, will list the exams running at this time in the RHS of the screen. Exam enrolments, including Study exams, can be accessed by clicking on the exam name. Students with a clash at this time will also be identified.
Set sessions as N/A - To prevent automatic scheduling assigning exams to a particular session. Click ‘Set as N/A’ and the slot will shade grey and any subsequent auto-scheduling of exams will respect this and only allocate exams to slots which are not blocked out.
Manually move exams - Drag and drop exams from one session to another. During the drag process itself, Timetable Daily will indicate which exams will create clashes by the red cones.
Pin exams – Click the padlock icon to lock exams in place. Note that Study exams are always locked and cannot be moved nor can they be unlocked.
Optimise – Optimise the schedule. Pinned exams and N/A sessions will be respected. Study exam enrolments will be updated automatically each time the schedule is optimised.

The number of constraints put within an exam determines how flexible each optimisation would be.

Optimisation in Daily 'resets' each time 'optimise' is clicked i.e. it does not carry forward from the last saved optimisation result.

Statistics - The statistics for the exam period are shown: total number of students in the exam period, total number of clashes, number of students with 2 exams on-a-day, number of students with 3 exams on-a-day.

A Note about Study Exams

There are two options available if study exams are required; Auto management and Manual management

Auto management

Study exams are created automatically for every session, even those with no other exams scheduled. They will be created requiring 1 supervisor and 1 room and will be populated with the students who do not have an exam in that session. However, study exams will not be populated with students if there are no other exams scheduled in that session and study exams with no students enrolled will not be assigned a supervisor when using the 'Staff exams' feature. Changes that are required for study exams, such as additional rooms and additional supervisors, can be made by editing the study exam event via the events module after the exam block is created and saved, however students cannot be added or removed.

Manual management

Study exams will be created manually as above but will NOT be populated with students. Management of these study exams will be done manually via the Events module where additional rooms, additional supervisors and students can be added or removed. All information added here will appear in the Exam module.

Unique Study exam names

Study exams will be named uniquely by having the exam block name as a prefix, e.g. Year 11 Finals Study 1. This will prevent issues when editing overlapping exam blocks that contain study exams.

Cloning Study exams

You can clone the study exams from your Events tab in Daily > Home. Doing this can be helpful when you have multiple rooms needed and you wish to split the students across the rooms. Once you clone the event, you can assign a room and supervisor, and manually select the students you wish to allocate to the room.

Step 5: Supervision and rooming

Supervision

In this tab, supervisors for exams can be allocated manually or by using the automated 'Staff exams' option. See below for information on the new options available for the auto-staffing function. This function automatically covers all exams with available teachers, and does so with respect to the entire exam period. This is different to the Home > Auto cover feature as that only works on a day by day basis. The 'Staff exams' function manages ideal cover duration and load equity across the entire exam period as well as some specific rules related to Exam covers.

NOTE: Supervision credit is calculated in the same way as normal covers - as a percentage of the median length period in the existing grid structure. When this credit amount is changed for a particular period via Daily > Settings > Cover credit, the new default credit will apply to all supervisions in that period, including historical supervisions. If this is not what is required, the credit amount can be changed manually to the desired amount in the supervision tab.

Rooming

The additional exam rooms are assigned here manually. There is no auto-rooming feature as exams rooms are specific and not all available rooms will be used for an exam block. Note that the 'main room' assigned to an exam via the Exams tab is not displayed here but will appear on the exam schedule generated via the 'Export to CSV' option in View timetable --> Exam and classes that need to be moved to accommodate the exam will appear on the Covers page. All assigned rooms, both main room and additional rooms, will be displayed on the 'printed' exam schedule and on the Supervision report.

Staffing Feature

In version 1.100.1 a new feature was introduced to assist with the auto-staffing of exams. There are now 3 options available to select when auto-staffing, giving schools the ability to staff exams in the manner which best suits their processes. These options are:

Use only teachers whose class has been cancelled in the selected period due to the exam and leave remaining exams uncovered.
Use teachers who have had one or more classes cancelled in any period on the day of the selected exam and leave the remaining exams uncovered.
Firstly use teachers who have had a class cancelled in any period on the day of the selected exam and then cover the remaining exams with any other available teachers. Available teachers would include those who are underload and those who have not reached their extras quota.

For schools who use external supervisors (including casual relief teachers), these cannot be assigned using the auto staffing feature and must be assigned manually.

While Timetable Daily will do a very good job of allocating covers, there may be some you will want to change. You can do so easily by clicking on the cover cell, in the same way as the manual cover adjustment used for normal daily covers.

The following actions can be performed:

1. Date	Scroll through the days of the exam period.
2. Filter by type	Filter to show all, teachers only or rooms only
3. Staff exams	Cover all days with staff released due to cancelled classes. Note that study exams with no students enrolled will not be covered. See notes above for options available when autostaffing.
4. Clear staffing	Clear supervisors from all exams for all days of the exam period or just for the selected day.
5. Clear rooms	Clear rooms from all exams for all days of the exam period or just for the selected day.
6. Export as PDF	Export the exam supervision roster as a PDF file. Note that the main room and additional rooming is now displayed on this report.
7. Export as CSV	Export the exam supervision roster as a CSV file. Note that the main room and additional rooming is now displayed on this export.
8. Equity report	This report shows the equity in your current exam supervision roster. It is shown for the current exam period only. You may want to make some odd manual adjustments to the covers as a result of this equity report, but it is more likely it will be used to placate staff who are concerned about equity issues.

Examination Documents

Once the examination period has been set up and the schedule created, there are several printing options available.

1. Print Exam Registration Slips and Rolls

Students examination registration slips can be generated by exam, student name or class group. Rolls can be generated for one or multiple exams, including study exams.

A. Select the exam or exams to be printed.

B. Generate the slips by selecting either 'by exam', 'by student name' or 'by class group' depending on the order that you wish the slips to be printed.

C. Generate rolls.

D. 'Select all' allows all examinations to be selected and their slips or rolls generated.

E. 'Clear selection' will clear all of the selected exams.

F. Print the slips or the rolls Please note: In order for a specific 'Student identification number' to be shown in the 'Statewide ID' field on exam slip, please add the required Student identification number in the 'StatewideID' column in Students->Student data in the etz timetable file. If the 'StatewideID' column is not visible, click on the 'view' option and select 'StatewideID' from the dropdown.
Once the StatewideID column has been populated, a sync from the etz file to the Edval web server (Timetable Daily) would be required for the changes to appear on the exams slips.

2. View Timetable - Students

Student individual timetables can be viewed by selecting 'Students' under 'View timetable'. Once selected, another screen will appear with options to print, email or export the selected student timetables.

A. The option will be given to print students timetables based on the exams they are enrolled in. Printing by examination may make it easier when there are a large number of students. Individual student timetables can also be selected.

B. Use 'Update' to update the screen based on the selection at A.

C. Use 'Clear' to clear the options previously selected.

D. Use 'Print' to print the selected student schedules. Note that this option prints in black and white. To print a colour version as per the screen, use CTRL-P

E. Use 'Email' to email timetables to the selected students. Only students with valid email addresses will be emailed.

F. Use 'Export to CSV' to create a csv file containing the student schedule in text form.

Note 1: Student email addresses need to be added or updated in the timetable etz file and then synced to the Edval web server.

Note 2: A document template is required to print and email exam schedules. For more information on Exam templates see this Knowledge Base article: Exam Document Templates

3. View Timetable - Exam

The examination schedule can be viewed by selecting this option. Once selected, another screen will appear with the Examination Schedule visible. On the right hand side of the screen there will be options to print or export the schedule. Note that the 'Print' option prints in black and white. To print a colour version as per the screen, use CTRL-P

Editing Exams

Once an exam block has been created and saved, it can be edited by going to Daily > Exams and selecting the edit icon at the end of the row of the relevant exam block. This will open up a window where editing can be done in any of the tabs shown below.

Additionally, the individual exam events can be edited by going to Daily > Events for the required day.

This may be needed if some cancelled classes need to be re-instated, if the exam time is different to the generic start or finish times entered for the exam block or if the date of the exam needs to change.

Note: A message will be generated if the exam is changed to a date outside the bounds of the exam block as doing this would create issues.

If you see a warning message saying 'An exam with the same name already exists' as seen on the screenshot below, the reason for this message is because there is duplicate exam which was created manually in event section with the same start time and finish time that wasn't created in automatically in the Exam.

Exam Blocks and Cancelled Classes

When an exam block is created for one or more year levels, all classes in the selected year level(s) will be cancelled for the duration of the exam block. In some circumstances, a school might wish to run one or more classes during the exam block and therefore will need to 'un-cancel' those classes. Eg NAPLAN Exams.

This can be done by going to Daily > Home > Events, locating the cancellation event for the required date , which was created automatically via the exam wizard, editing the event and then de-selecting the classes that they wish to run.

In the example below, the cancellation event for the selected day has been edited and the English classes have been de-selected, meaning that they are no longer cancelled and will run on that day.