I heard from the Engineering 1 course coordinator lady that the reason that McMaster is taking a hell of a long time to get anything marked is because the entire campus only has one scantron machine.

Seriously, what the hell?! Why wouldn't the university invest in more? I'm sure they aren't that expensive, considering the university kind of has a lot of disposable income.

My highschool had one scantron machine, and that was for 1200 students. By the logic, McMaster, which has around 20,000 students (I think?) should have at least 16 scantron machines.

/rant

Crap. 3 of my exams are scantron.

Maybe its a super-massive scantron machine, which can do the work of 16 regular scantron machines, jokes aside Mac needs to step it up with anything they do online.

All of my exam used scantron. So far I got 2 out of 6 courses's grade. X.X

I wouldn't necessarily believe that, it's a little outrageous. It could be that only one is working for Engineering right now, or by some (again outrageous) fluke they all broke except for one.

Keep in mind that scantron machines get jammed and break when you're feeding literally THOUSANDS of sheets into them. Not to mention that if the machine can't read someones scantron they have to be marked by hand and ALL of the students marks have to be ready before any are released. Get used to the fact that marks take a long time to come out, its the same way at most schools.

And last year when I worked in the Liaison Office the quote was 25,000 undergrads alone. I believe that includes part timers.

Well, this is taken directly off WebCT from a discussion in the general engineering boards about the issue:

Other exams and course evaluations ARE "hogging the machine." There is a single
operator and ONE machine. And it can take people like me several hours to get the
scanning sheets ready to be scanned.

I have over 900 papers in Eng 1P03, and I have to check each paper to be sure that the
student number is bubbled in (I don't have time to check for accuracy -- that is the
student's responsibility) and that the version number is bubbled in. Then I have to put
them into rough alphabetical order. (And another 450 in Eng 1D04.)

So.... even with multiple choice, the process is not simple, and it is very time-
consuming. And having the exam grade is only a very small part of the huge process of
creating final (or midterm) grades.

So, you patience is appreciated.
JM Norris
Course Coordinator

Fair point but I still find it pretty hard to believe that the university only has one scantron machine. I mean it's completely possible but just kind of unlikely. I'm willing to bank on there being an explanation to that.

I'm sorry your course coordinator is having such a rough time with it but I'm pretty positive that he/she is not the only one.

Now that I think about it, that is a little ambiguous. That could mean either only one scantron machine available to the first year engineering faculty, or one on the whole campus. Lets hope the former :p

I doubt it's one for the whole campus haha. I actually find that hard to believe.
But whatever, no marks but at least we're done exams haha. My friends at Ottawa were writing exams yesturday. Ridiculous.

Originally Posted by lorend

Aaaand anyone you know at York is screwed for their entire year, so yay Mac!

lol, everyone I know that went to York wasn't even happy about being there when it wasn't on strike.

Back to the topic of scantron, from what I've seen there is a scantron station in the basement of KTH with one operator, and it's the only one I've seen. There may be others on campus.

I'm guessing that each major building probably has at least one.

On ScanTron Machines :

I specifically remember our accounting professor telling us that the entire university has only one Scantron machine; and the reason we had to wait for our midTerm marks for an extended period of time was because the "ScanTron guy was sick".

He/the class found this both frustrating and comical.

For those wanting to discuss York U, I suggest starting a new thread about it. I can most all the York-related posts from this thread and merge them into the new thread if you'd like.