December 2004

Busier than Santa’s Elves? FDES Delivers the Goods for Distance Learners

By Greg Rosenthal
Special to FYI Online

Alba Beckford (second from left), exam coordinator for UMUC, with FDES staffers (from left) Fetle Tsegaye, Mike Filippone, Jason Barnard, Matthew Williams Jr. (seated), Centra Johnson, and Sarawork Kassa.

As the holidays approach and mythical elves race to meet production deadlines at the North Pole, very real UMUC workers labor to process proctored exams worldwide. Compared to Faculty and Distance Education Services (FDES) employees, the elves have it easy.

In the FDES “workshop” at UMUC’s Metro Center location, employees produced exams for 974 fall course sections—and the 19,398 students who took them—using three massive copiers.

“We definitely give those copiers a run,” said Alba Beckford, UMUC’s exam coordinator, noting that each exam that reaches a student results from a long, complex, and deadline-driven process that begins when a student registers online for a final exam. She noted that each exam placed in a student’s hand comes from a long, complex, and deadline-driven process, beginning when students register online for their final exam.

The next challenge is to receive exams from faculty on time and check the copy for potential problems.

Jacki Brown-Baxter, assistant director of FDES

“We hire two people to review the exams to make sure instructions are clear and the numbering sequence is correct,” said Jacki Brown-Baxter, assistant director of FDES. “During the exam, that’s when we get calls and questions—a missing question or instructions that don’t make sense.”

After the exams are copied with the appropriate proctor instruction forms, FDES employees spend about three weeks packaging and shipping them across the United States and worldwide. The remaining exams are packed for UMUC’s regional sites across Maryland—Adelphi, Annapolis, Shady Grove, and the College of Southern Maryland. “It’s about a week-long process,” said Beckford. “Each exam for every course we have is sent to these locations in crates by course number.” On exam days, students arrive at the sites with their registration-confirmation e-mail and valid identification. At Adelphi, the exam tables stretch the entire length of the Inn and Conference Center’s lower level, with one side dedicated to open-book exams and the other side dedicated to closed-book exams.

“After the exam weekend at the regional sites, all exams come back to our office in crates, alphabetized by instructor,” said Beckford. FDES then reconciles each exam received against the course roster before shipping the exams to more than 550 faculty members for grading. There isn’t much time to recuperate between cycles.

Anyone worried that a package will be lost in the mail can imagine what that means when students and faculty in any one UMUC course are continents apart and there is a deadline to meet. Says Beckford, “If we lose one exam, that’s too many.”

“Once the exams leave us, we must go into mid-fall mode, since testing begins in mid-February, after winter break,” Beckford said. “Exams are coming in [from faculty] for the mid-fall semester in early November while we’re distributing fall semester exams. We’ll ship mid-fall right after winter break.”

Brown-Baxter knows what that means for FDES. “Primarily, the process requires us to at least start preparations six to eight weeks early to get everything done on time,” she said, adding that timeliness is of utmost importance at all phases of the process. “Adhering to deadlines is critical. At the other end, when we respond to issues of missing exams and incorrect exams, we try to respond in a timely manner. After exams are administered, we are very busy responding to issues through the proctor or student.”

The pace hardly lets up until the end of August, Beckford added, because FDES is otherwise processing either fall, mid-fall, spring, mid-spring, or summer semester exams.

At least Santa’s elves only have one production cycle each year.