Waterford Institute of Technology has confirmed that exams will be replaced by alternative assessment this year.
The Academic Council has announced the change to allow students to finish the academic year within the expected time frame.
Students will be provided with details of the alternative assessment arrangements for each programme on Friday.
Dr Derek O'Byrne is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at WIT; he says there's a wide range of alternative assessments:
"I think when we look at exams, we look at that as the main piece of assessment that students do but in reality, across an academic year, there's lots of other types of assessments. Whether they be practical-based types of exams, essay type of exams or whether they're other types of tests or assessments they do within the classroom.
"So we're extending on that competency we have to make sure we're assessing the students in the most appropriate way on the programme, so it will vary dramatically from discipline to discipline what students would have to do."
He explains why they're doing this:
"It's important that students get a fair chance at completing the year on time and the reality is they can't do the formal kind of written exams, so we're going to mirror the learning that we're testing in those exams in some other way and that's the primary purpose of the alternative exam, the structure that's being put in place for them."
