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Printer-Friendly ModeUniversity needs a central test center for make-ups
January 15, 2008 —
SVSU needs a centralized testing center so students can take make-up exams under academically fair conditions. As it is, make-ups are proctored haphazardly across departments with various levels of faculty supervision and awareness and university oversight.
I have worked in the adjunct support office (formerly known as Evening Services) for a little over a year now. The office (under both monikers) has long provided a valuable service to faculty and students in administering make-up exams at times throughout the week. As long as I've worked there, the service has been utilized to great effect.
But for as many people that have taken make-ups with us, a lot more have been left to fend for themselves, arranging to take exams under conditions in which oversight is questionably rigorous, if they can even arrange to take the exams at all.
Students need to take tests under reasonably congruent conditions to ensure that academic integrity is upheld. The adjunct office's testing service has done this for as long as I've been there.
But that service needs to be expanded. For every 10 testing-related calls I answer, perhaps five students have schedules that fit the hours that we offer testing. A couple of them have to work on Fridays, others have classes on Thursdays. Whatever the case may be, it's still unacceptable that up to 50 percent of the students have to figure out some other route to make up their exam.
The adjunct office is expanding testing hours for the winter semester, which reflects a growing demand for the service. But our hours still won't suit the needs of many students and faculty.
Furthermore, the adjunct office is not centrally located, discouraging faculty with offices and classes in the far-flung corners of campus from using the service. And being known as the Office of Adjunct Faculty Support certainly doesn't help in this regard, since there's nothing about testing in our title, and you won't find anything on the SVSU Web site that indicates we offer a testing service (outside of our page). So it's possible that the majority of students who do take make-up exams do so outside the auspices of our office.
I'm not trying to argue that taking exams outside of our testing service is academically unethical as a matter of course, or that all make-ups conducted outside of the controlled environment that the adjunct office offers are of questionable integrity. But taking exams in such an environment virtually guarantees that the student who took the exam took it under conditions very much similar to the conditions his or her peers took it under. As similar as possible given the circumstances, anyway.
Perhaps a simple lack of awareness is at the root of the problem. If everyone knew that the adjunct office proctored exams during certain times during the week, everyone might use it.
But that seems unrealistic, for a couple of reasons. First, the adjunct office is just that - an adjunct office. It is also the only office on campus that handles calls after 4:30 p.m. (thus its old name, Evening Services). Its foremost duty is to provide adjuncts with support, training and other benefits (there are hundreds of adjuncts at SVSU).
Its other important duty is to handle phone and foot traffic after 4:30 for both students and faculty. In providing make-up proctoring for the entire university, the office is taking an extra step to serve the university community.
Taken at face value, this problem may seem rather simple and maybe a bit trivial. But that's exactly why I'm writing about it: it is a simple problem, with a potentially simple solution.
I think the solution is clear. SVSU should create a centralized testing center in which students will take all make-up exams. This will make it as easy and convenient as possible to take make-up exams, and needless to say, it'll make the conditions under which they're taken as fair as possible.