It’s finals season. In just a few short days, students will be sitting down to take some of the most important exams of the semester. The weeks preceding final exams can be stressful for many people, but this year, Hamline students have something additional to worry about.

In years past, students could find the time and location of their final exams on Piperline, next to their class information and schedule. At the end of 2013, however, ITS and Classroom and Space Management began discussing a new organizational system.

“The way we listed final exam times in Banner, the database behind our Piperline interface, was not compatible with the room scheduling program,” said Hamline Registrar Gwenn Sherburne.

Due to this discrepancy, they contacted CollegeNET, who produces Hamline’s 25Live scheduling software. After looking over the options, they decided that the only way for the programs to be compatible would be to completely remove the final exam lines from the individual classes.

“At first, I was really confused. In the time I’ve been at Hamline, it’s always been the same thing. Your finals are listed right there on Piperline. It’s easy and that’s where everyone looks to find it,” said Hamline student Veronika Polovinkina.

Polovinkina isn’t the only student who’s had trouble adjusting to the new system. “The worst part is, a lot of teachers don’t put the finals information on the syllabus, so there was pretty much no way to find it,” she commented.

Sherburne said, “We asked faculty to help get the word out by putting the final exam information in syllabi, announcing it in classes, and whatever other ways they thought would help. We did not send out an email blast directly to students.” Email blasts, however, are exactly how most Hamline offices communicate with the student body.

Out of 20 first year students who were asked about their exam schedule, 9 of them said they had no idea when or where their finals were going to be held. Of the students that did know, most reported that they had found out by asking their teachers or checking their syllabus. Only one freshman student, however, said that they had found the finals schedule on the Hamline website.

The current schedule for the upcoming exams can instead be found on the Hamline website, on the. Academic Calendars page of the Registration and Records section within General Student Resources. A simpler method to finding it, however, is searching “final exam schedule” in the search bar on the website’s home screen and the first result is a link to the page.

ITS and Classroom and Space Management have heard what the students are saying, and they plan on utilizing emails in the future. “Based on feedback from fall, we will reference the final exam schedule and include a link in the start-of-term email we send to students,” said Sherburne.

She added, “Right now, our plan is to continue to this new practice in order to continue to use our scheduling software. As with any software product we use, we will reevaluate our processes as upgrades are released.”