Over the last few weeks, students have had to deal with all manner of IT problems when taking exams in the Comenius building. The university is aware of the issues and is working on a solution.

Radboud University opened a on the Comeniuslaan last year. The rooms of the former office building are very suitable for taking digital exams; almost 900 students can work there simultaneously.

However, this went wrong several times in the last few weeks. So says Charlotte Kuijpers (20), who is attending a minor in business administration at Radboud University. She had to take four exams in the Comenius building, and every time there was some issue with her computer.

Additional Stress

‘One of the exams didn’t boot up at first, which meant that I had to wait for ten minutes before I could start. For two of the other exams the spell check didn’t use the correct settings and during the fourth exam the computer froze regularly.’

Eventually, Kuijpers was able to finish all the exams as normal. She received an additional 15 minutes during the exams where the spell check didn’t work. ‘But I was especially stressed out for the first exams because it took so long before I could begin.’

‘Previously, we could centrally change the spell checker settings for all devices.’

University spokesperson Martijn Gerritsen confirms that there are three separate IT issues in the Comenius building; the problem with the automatic spell checker is one of them. ‘Previously, we could centrally change the spell checker settings for all devices, but for some reason we can’t do that anymore.’

Another issue is that some students get a white screen instead of their exam after they log in to one of the computers. ‘When that happens, they can simply change computers.’ The final issue is that some computers just don’t work properly; they’re very slow and need to be rebooted.

Out on the table

Gerritsen does not know the exact scale of the IT issues. The problem with the spell checker seems to be the biggest one. ‘The other two issues are a lot less frequent. Students who experienced any trouble usually received some additional time to finish their exam.’

The university is working on a solution to the issues. ‘Employees at the IT department are looking into what goes wrong’, according to Gerritsen. We want to get everything out on the table.’