Final Exam Schedule Methodology

Rice University’s final exam period contains three exam slots per day for seven days.

The Office of the Registrar (OTR) assigns every undergraduate section in the course offering schedule into these final exam slots, creating the exam schedule in consideration of several goals, ranked in order of priority:

1. Provide the exam schedule to the university by the start of the eighth week of classes
2. Assign each section to one exam time slot
3. Place reasonable time buffers between exams (“not too close together or too far apart”)
4. Place exams as early as possible within the exam period (“not too long from start to finish”)
5. Minimize the number of “conflicts” (occurrences of students with two simultaneous exams)
6. Minimize the number of students who have more than 2 scheduled final exams in 2 consecutive days.

Process

Consideration of the above goals results in the following process for creation of the exam schedule:

1. Assign Exam Time Slots for "Anchor Courses"
   • Rice offers "service" courses in CHEM, MATH, PHYS, BIOS, and STAT. Currently CHEM, MATH, and PHYS are allocated to dedicated slots and are rotated each semester so that each will have an opportunity to complete their finals at the beginning of the Final Schedule. BIOS and STAT are assigned exam slots to avoid possible conflicts with the other Anchor Courses.
   • Within each subject, many service courses are equivalent to or are pre-requisites of one another, so enrollment in more than one service course within one subject is rare.
   • Very large numbers of students enroll in this very small number of service courses.
   • The exam schedule is "anchored" around these service courses, which are placed by subject in strategic slots in the exam period, with no other courses included in these slots whenever possible (excluding BIOS and STAT).
   • The rest of the exam schedule then is built around these "Anchor Courses."
2. Assign Exam Time Slots for Sections with Defined Meeting Patterns. There are many possible exam schedules, each one a different permutation of the more than 1,000 undergraduate sections placed into the exam slots. However, most of these possibilities are undesirable for students because they would have exams spread across too many days or packed tightly into too few days, or they would have conflicts with two exams at the same time. Rice students and faculty benefit from an ideal exam schedule, one which satisfies the goals above. Rice University has an attendance policy, so each student is expected to enroll in courses which do not have identical or overlapping meeting times. Thus, an ideal exam schedule is based sensibly, on sections' meeting day/time patterns. First, because the majority of courses meet in Prime Time (MWF 10:00-1:50 and TR 9:25-2:15), all sections in each Prime Time block (such as MWF 10:00-10:50) are assigned to one time slot. Then, all other sections are assigned to exam slots.
   
   After assignment of the Anchor Courses into slots, the remaining exam slots are used to for assignment of the other sections, which have over 100 different meeting patterns. Therefore, some time slots must contain courses with different meeting patterns. Depending on the meeting patterns in each slot and the course schedules of the students involved, this "doubling up" in some time slots could create schedule conflicts for a small number of students. This is unfortunate, but it is unavoidable, given the short length of Rice's exam period and the multitude of courses offered.
3. Assign Time Slots for All Remaining Sections. All remaining sections have no defined meeting patterns, so they are assigned to a single exam to slot yielding the fewest number of known student conflicts. Such conflicts must be resolved between student and instructor.
4. There are a number of courses without defined meeting patterns (TBA). These courses are assigned to the same time slot. Any conflicts must be worked out between the student and instructor.

Conflicts

Although the intent is to create a sensible exam schedule with no issues, some conflicts may result.

• Students taking two Anchor Courses within one subject

  For example, since all MATH Anchor Course exams are offered in one time slot, a student enrolled in two MATH Anchor Courses will have a conflict.

• Students who are "double-booked"

  Since the efficient exam schedule is based on sections’ meeting patterns, students who have registered for sections with identical or overlapping meetings may have exams at the same time.

• Students taking two or more sections with unknown meeting patterns

  Sections with no known day/time meeting patterns are placed in the same exam time slots.

• Multiple meeting patterns in one time slot

  This is the result of an exam period with only 21 time slots for more than 100 meeting patterns.

• Non-standard meeting patterns

  It is hoped that academic departments offer sections with "standard meeting times", so that the students in their courses do not have to "double-book" themselves in order to take the desired/required courses. For example, a MWF 10:00-10:50 section conflicts with other sections at the same time, but a MW 9:00-10:30 section conflicts with all MWF 9:00-9:50 and 10:00-10:50 sections. Non-standard meeting times increase the probability of conflicts.

Notes

• When possible, a section is assigned to a final exam time slot which closely matches that section’s semester meeting pattern. For example, a section which meets in the evening during the semester likely will be assigned to an evening final exam time slot.

• Time slot assignments are rotated across similar semesters (Fall-to-Fall and Spring-to-Spring) to prevent any one class from consistently being placed in less favorable time slots.

• The type of final exam to be offered is determined by the instructor.

• Ideally, the final exam schedule would be based on only those sections which have scheduled exams. However, because departments make course schedule changes for weeks after the start of classes, and because instructors modify their final exam plans through to the end of the semester, the OTR bases the exam schedule on all undergraduate sections, even those which later prove to have take-home exams or no exams. (The alternative is to create the exam schedule only a few days before exams start.) Note: The due date of a course’s take-home exam may be no earlier than the end of the examination time assigned to that sections by the OTR. See General Announcements.

• With over 1,000 undergraduate sections to schedule in 21 time slots in seven days, it is not possible to guarantee the stipulation in the General Announcements that students can not be required to take more than two scheduled exams in two consecutive calendar days.

• Each student with an exam conflict is expected to resolve the conflict by discussing the issue with one instructor, in order to find an alternate time for one of the conflicting exams.. See General Announcements.

• Due to the large number of students in Anchor Courses, these exams should not be rescheduled. Other, smaller exams may be rescheduled to alleviate exam congestion in students’ schedules.