Next years timetable

Aranious

Not many people know it, mainly because of DKIT's Stellar communication with it's students, but our Christmas exams have now been moved to after Christmas, this is after they held a vote of all students, a vote that excluded a majority of students for some odd reason, to see our opinion to this. I don't have the exact numbers but the percentage of the no vote was very large, but once again the college doesn't listen to the students, just like when we all apparently said we wanted our Halloween study week taken from us.

Personally I've had enough of the awful communication with and interest in the welfare of the students the college needs to know when people are angry about these kind of things, the Carrols building didn't have Wi-Fi for the first 12 weeks because it was decided that " it wasn't needed in the building" you know, the building with the IT and Computing students in it.

I don't know about anyone else but my own thoughts about this have 3 or 4 main points. First off, yeah , the Christmas exams were stressful as hell, but hey, we had a (relatively) stress free Christmas afterwards to look forward to, but now , if I was to follow my study plan that I had before the Christmas exams I'm going to be shutting my self in a room for 2 weeks.

Another concern of mine is students who live away from home, I don't just mean Erasmus students, though they fall under this heading too, what about those of us who are from other sides of the country, where traveling home and back for exams just isn't a possibility, do we miss spending Christmas with our family?

But I think the point that annoys me most is this, I know others have mailed the head of the college with similar complaints about time, and some have received, what I would class as down right insulting responses to it such as "we are aware of the students opinion on this but the decision has been made" basically, "we don't care"

Something I think many people will find interesting is this

http://ww2.dkit.ie/staff_and_admin/governance/academic_council/archive_of_minutes/2010/academic_council_meeting_no_114

It seems even the lecturers are displeased with the change in exams, and that's something I didn't even take into consideration, they have to write and supervise and correct these exams , missing out on their own Christmas.

So I think as a student body we need to stand up and do something, these next few weeks are going to be vitally important to us. College is going to be hard enough with grants being cut and our lives made more difficult without having to deal with the extra stress of after Christmas exams.

ShaShaBear

Even the staff is aware that the college is inadequate. Like I said earlier yesterday, registration dates for non first years has been available on the website (embedded three sections deep in Admissions) for over a month and not a single student has been notified of their time, date and venue for registration, a mere minimum of 6 days prior to the first date. I myself am on a BTEA scheme, and have to sign on the very same day I have to register. Until I receive my letter from the college giving me a time, there is nothing I can do to ensure I don't incur either a late registration fee or the loss of that weeks €188. Despicable. Never mind the fact that DKIT apparently re-set all of their student passwords, and neglected to forward on the mass text to everyone informing them of the procedures to take in order to get their new one. Meaning most of the repeat students have no access to Moodle or student mail.
Don't even get me started on the change at Christmas. It's going to be my first major holiday without my father since he passed away in March, and likely I will be forced to spend the entirety of it in my flat in Dundalk studying myself back into depression, instead of spending it at home with my family, giving them the love and support they need at a time like that.

Aranious

ShaShaBear wrote: »

Even the staff is aware that the college is inadequate. Like I said earlier yesterday, registration dates for non first years has been available on the website (embedded three sections deep in Admissions) for over a month and not a single student has been notified of their time, date and venue for registration, a mere minimum of 6 days prior to the first date. I myself am on a BTEA scheme, and have to sign on the very same day I have to register. Until I receive my letter from the college giving me a time, there is nothing I can do to ensure I don't incur either a late registration fee or the loss of that weeks €188. Despicable. Never mind the fact that DKIT apparently re-set all of their student passwords, and neglected to forward on the mass text to everyone informing them of the procedures to take in order to get their new one. Meaning most of the repeat students have no access to Moodle or student mail.
Don't even get me started on the change at Christmas. It's going to be my first major holiday without my father since he passed away in March, and likely I will be forced to spend the entirety of it in my flat in Dundalk studying myself back into depression, instead of spending it at home with my family, giving them the love and support they need at a time like that.

I'm actually one of those repeat students locked out too, disgraceful

Cpt Tremendous

Rather than just rant, see here for my two blog posts about this. I wrote these back when the announcement was made.

Part 1 - http://cpttremendous.com/blog/2011/05/12/letter-to-the-president/
Part 2 - http://cpttremendous.com/blog/2011/05/13/the-union-responds/

Can I also point out (without being a dick) that rallying the troops at this stage has a slight "to little too late" feeling about it. This was announced in early May, and myself and a few others did our best to raise awareness and get it fixed, more than the SU did.

Trouble is, the SU and college revised their decision and moved the exams back an extra week. Admittedly it's not a huge improvement, but it took quite a lot of pushing to happen. Now just 6 weeks before the new calendar comes into effect you want to make more changes.

Hopefully the exams can change but for the most part it's a waste of time. And if the college starts back at the later date, it will be better to have the exams held after xmas rather than before. As the latter will greatly reduce the length of the semester and increase pressure and stress.

glenbl54

Yeah but starting back later is not that good either, especially for people with final year projects that need all the time in the world for their projects, and now rather than starting back at a nice date getting approval early on and then having all of Christmas for doing their projects now loose out on all that time. They now have to wait extra weeks to know if they can go ahead with their projects, loose out on valuable time cause they'll have to study.

Cpt Tremendous

Not see how this is an issue tbf. All students who have final year projects this year, myself included will be working on it during the semester. From what I know from having a few friends who have done 4th year projects as recent as last year, they had to generate a proposal and pitch their project to two interviewing lecturers, at a set date. Once the project was approved they could begin work.

I imagine that this set date will be adjusted according to the new calendar and that the final due date will be adjusted also. These specifics haven't been published because they are finalised once the semester begins.

Edit: you will also have the remainder of January off for holidays so you can work on your project. Those 3 weeks off to do project work shouldn't make a difference by their positioning at either the beginning or end of the month

Aranious

You're probably right about it being too late to do anything about the exams now, if you remember I tried to do my part in may too, but work got in t way, I think it's more about the colleges treatment of students in general. I mean the exams are one of my biggest gripes with the college at the moment, but as ShaShaBear said they reset the passwords with a total failure to communicate this with the students, now some people I know got texts but not everyone, and including myself in this, a lot of us are now locked out of Moodle and Webmail.

Maybe at this stage I'm just shouting in the dark but I still feel it needs to be said to the college again and again and again until they at least start consulting the SU on major matters because as you pointed out in your blog, they weren't even consulted about this.

Slashman X

Did you send this on to Denis Cummins?

Aranious

Slashman X wrote: »

Did you send this on to Denis Cummins?

aye

emmbay

I don't think it is that bad if the exams are at the start of January though becausee semester 2 doesn't start till the 30th of January, so if you only have a few exams you should have a couple of weeks off before you start back classes normally like... Well thats my idea of it..

Hank_Jones

emmbay wrote: »

I don't think it is that bad if the exams are at the start of January though becausee semester 2 doesn't start till the 30th of January, so if you only have a few exams you should have a couple of weeks off before you start back classes normally like... Well thats my idea of it..

Would imagine someone who has to travel from Donegal for a couple of exams would have a different view of it though.

If the weather is bad also, which it most likely will be, that will put people at risk of missing exams.