Exam timetables for the semester one assessment period will be released on November 11, according to a tweet from Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Education Officer, Niamh McCay.
This year’s winter exams will be held during the week of Monday December 9 to Friday December 13, with additional exams that could not be accommodated during this week to be held on Monday December 16 and Tuesday December 17.
Exams will be run across 20 venues, including several on-campus venues and the main hall of the RDS in Ballsbridge.
Semester two exams will be held during the last week in April. Supplemental exams, for students who either failed a module or were unable to attend an exam will take place at the end of August into early September.
This will be the second year of winter exams in Trinity, having been introduced following the semesterisation of Trinity’s academic year structure under the Trinity Education Project (TEP). Previously, for the majority of students, exams took place once a year at the end of the academic year before summer began, with a three week study period beforehand.
The intention behind TEP was to spread assessments out in order to make them more manageable and ease the pressure of a single set of exams in the summer.
However, the system has been criticised, including in an open letter to the Provost signed by over 300 students, which stated that the outcome had been “larger amounts of continuous assessment for fewer marks”, increasing workload while “the main emphasis still remains on a final exam”.
College has also been criticised for scheduling exams over the shorter time period under the new system. Exams under TEP are scheduled over the course of a week, with one week without lectures to study beforehand. Under the old system exams were held over two weeks, with three weeks of study preceding them.
