News Archive

It’s exam time again at UWA and there’s a lot of organising going on in the background. Just ask Sudarsan Krishnaswamy, the senior administrative officer in Exams and Progression in Student Administration.

This exam period, which runs from 7 til 21 November, UWA will be holding 481 exams for 15,213 students. That’s 43,633 sittings in 49venues across the Crawley and Albany campuses and fourteen different rural locations for the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry exams.

It’s a tremendously busy time for Sudarsan and his team. “We prepare the exam material for 40 to 50 exams a day, nearly 3700 students,” he said. “Our largest exam is Psychology, which this semester has 756 students.”

The weeks leading up to exams are busy too.

“We’re training our invigilators – the people who monitor students during the exam,” said Sudarsan. “This semester we have 75. We train them how to handle difficult situations, like what to do if a student gets sick during an exam.”

Invigilators have to accompany the sick student to the medical centre, after which the student is not permitted to enter the exam venue again.

“We usually get five-to-ten sick students a day during exams,” said Sudarsan.

Sudarsan and his team also organise exams for UniAccess students – students with some form of disability, which the University offers Alternative Exam Arrangements based on the medical condition.

“We have 308 UniAccess students this semester,” he said. “These are students with varied medical conditions and thus varied requirements.”

“If required, we employ ‘nurse invigilators’ to manage and assist the student if any medical condition episodes break-out during the exam,” said Sudarsan. “Alternative Exam Arrangements might include extra time, scribes, carers to accompany the student during the exam, use of computers, lecterns, a foot-stool, pillows, cushions, or temperature-controlled rooms.”

Currently under Student Services, Sudarsan and the Student Administration team will report to the Dean of Coursework Studies, Professor Grady Venville, from 1 December. For more about changes to the structure of the Education Portfolio, please see the announcement in UWA Forward .