University of Wisconsin-Madison Accommodated Testing Information
Testing Lab Instructions, Expectations, and FAQs
Student Instructions and Expectations
Please see below for detailed instructions on how to schedule an appointment at our testing lab. If you are experiencing any problems with scheduling your appointment, please contact the testing coordinator immediately by email at testing.coordinator@exams.wisc.edu.
- If you would like to complete your exam at Testing and Evaluation Services, please inform your instructor as soon as possible or at least one week before your exam so that they have adequate time to create an exam submission on RegisterBlast.
- Before scheduling an appointment on RegisterBlast, you must receive notice from your instructor that an exam request has been submitted. You will not be able to schedule an appointment on RegisterBlast without your instructor first creating an exam submission. If you have not received notice at least one week before your exam, please contact your instructor immediately.
- Once your instructor sends you notice that an exam submission has been created, you may go to the canvas page for your course and click on the link that says Testing Center.
- That link will take you to your exams homepage. From there you can navigate to various tabs on your student portal. To schedule an appointment, please click the link for the course you would like to schedule an exam for.
- All of your McBurney approved accommodations will appear under the Select Accommodations heading. Please choose all accommodations you would like to have for this exam. Please note that this field is not pre-checked, so you MUST select specific accommodations if you wish to have access to them during your exam.
- The Choose a time drop down menu will only show times that are within your instructors allowed time range to take the exam AND times when T&E has a seat available. If the time you would like to test is not available, that means that we do not have a seat available at that time and you will need to pick a different time to test.
- If the available start times listed do not work with your schedule, please reach out to your instructor.
- You may opt into text messaging notifications by entering your phone number in the box that says Would you like to receive test notifications?. If you opt in, you will receive a notification when you schedule your exam and 24 hours prior to your start time.
- Once you have reviewed all fields to ensure accuracy, please click Add to cart. You will be taken to your cart where you can either add another exam or click complete registration to finalize your appointment.
- If your appointment was successfully scheduled, the message at the top of the screen will read Student, your registration is complete!. All details of your exam appointment will appear below. You will also receive a confirmation email and a confirmation text message (if opted in). If anything is incorrect, you may edit your appointment up to 48 hours prior to your appointment start time.
- Unless otherwise specified, please arrive at the location indicated on your confirmation email and on your exam details on your dashboard.
To use our services, all students must agree to the following expectations as established by Testing and Evaluation Services:
- Please meet with your instructors at the beginning of the semester (or as soon after you receive your accommodations as possible) to discuss testing accommodations. If it is determined that accommodations will be provided at our Testing and Evaluation, ask your instructor to create an exam submission. After they have created the exam submission, they will contact you to schedule an appointment.
- All students must schedule their appointments 48 hours prior to their exam start time. Walk-ins are not accepted and will be turned away.
- You are responsible for scheduling your appointment before the 48 hour deadline. If you are experiencing difficulties in scheduling your appointment prior to this deadline, it is your responsibility to contact the testing coordinator as soon as possible.
- Arrive to your appointment on time. If you will be arriving late, it is your responsibility to alert the testing coordinator to avoid any delays in your exam administration.
- Your appointment is set when you schedule it. If you arrive late, you will be given the remaining time on your appointment.
- You may not bring any unauthorized aids into the testing room. If you have questions regarding what materials will be allowed, please contact your instructor.
- Access to cell phones, smart devices, or other electronics is not allowed while you are taking your exam unless such use and/or access is medically necessary and specified in your accommodations.
- Once you begin your exam, you much remain in the testing lab until your exam is completed. Bathrooms are located on site.
- All testing materials must remain in the testing lab and be returned in their entirety to testing center staff unless specified by your instructor. In the event of any confusion, the testing lab will collect all test materials and your instructor will confirm if you can come back to collect them. Please contact the testing coordinator to pick up any exam materials.
- Extended bathroom breaks of longer than five minutes will be subject to pocket checks upon returning to the testing room and will be reported to your instructor.
- Rude, disruptive, or harassing behavior is not tolerated in the Testing Lab. Violators of this policy will be asked to leave immediately, may be denied future testing at Testing and Evaluation, and will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct for non-academic misconduct.
Student FAQ
Please contact your instructor to have them set up an exam submission as soon as possible. If your instructor requires assistance in setting up an exam submission, please refer them to this website or have them contact the testing coordinator.
You may edit, reschedule, or cancel any existing appointment on RegisterBlast. Any edits or reschedules must be completed 48 hours prior to your exam start time. Rescheduling or editing your appointment within 48 hours is not allowed. You may cancel your appointment at any time.
Refer your instructor to the instructor expectations portion of our website or inform them to contact the testing coordinator. It is the responsibility of the instructor to set up an exam submission for their students to schedule an appointment and we do not accept walk-in appointments.
All exams must be scheduled 48 hours prior to your exam start time. When scheduling your appointment, RegisterBlast will only show dates and times that are both within your instructors exam window and for which we have seats available for you to test. If a particular date or time is not listed, that means it is either outside of your instructors exam window or there is no longer a seat available during the date and/or time you wish to test. Please select a different time when a seat is available. If you are not available during the times listed or there are no times listed to take your exam, please contact your instructor.
When submitting an exam request, instructors are required to include a contact phone number and email that will be monitored during the exam. If you have any questions regarding the content of your exam during your administration, please notify our proctors immediately and they will make every effort to contact your instructor as soon as possible.
Faculty/Staff Instructions and Expectations
Please see below for detailed instructions on how to create an exam submission for your course. If you are experiencing any issues with creating exam submissions, please contact the testing coordinator immediately by email at testing.coordinator@exams.wisc.edu.
- To use RegisterBlast, instructors must first connect their course canvas pages to RegisterBlast. For information on how to do so, please see the Faculty/Staff FAQ section below.
- When a student indicates that they would like to complete their accommodated exams at Testing and Evaluation Services, login to the canvas page for your course and click on the Testing Center (RegisterBlast) link. This will take you to your instructor submissions home page for that course. If you are supervising multiple courses, it is encouraged to bookmark or otherwise save your instructor homepage on RegisterBlast to your web browser.
- We ask that faculty/staff create exam submissions as early in the semester as possible and at least one week prior to the exam. This will give students the time that they need to schedule their appointments.
- Once on your instructor submissions homepage, you may click on the plus icon to create a new exam submission.
- On the exam submission builder, please fill out all of the appropriate information fields related to exam details, file management, additional information, eligibility and restrictions, and exam instructions. You will be able to modify any of these inputs once the exam submission is created.
- If you wish to include a specific start time and end time, please make sure that there is enough time between both to accommodate for your students who may have extra time. We advise setting your end time to at least double the amount of time it would take to finish the exam to account for students who might have the double time accommodation.
- Please note that at this time, due to a quirk in how RegisterBlast implemented our schedule, students will not be able to schedule an appointment that would finish after 4:00pm. They may start an exam at 4:00pm or later, however, RegisterBlast is currently not allowing students to schedule exams that start before 4:00pm that would finish after 4:00pm. Please keep this in mind when setting any start and end time restrictions.
- If all information entered is correct, you may click submit to generate the exam submission (or submit and print if you would like a paper copy for your records). Once you click submit, you will be taken back to your instructor page where you can now see the exam submission that you created.
- Once your submission has been created, please contact all students who have disclosed the need for accommodations as soon as possible and let them know that they may now schedule their appointments. Direct students to your canvas course page and inform them to click on the link that says: Testing Center (RegisterBlast). This will take them to their RegisterBlast homepage where they can schedule their appointment.
- If you wish to set up multiple exams with similar parameters but different dates, you may do so by cloning the submission. This is useful if you want to quickly create multiple exam submissions.
- You may manage your exam submissions at any time by going to your instructor submission homepage and clicking on the name of the submission you wish to edit (or by clicking the three dots next to the submission and clicking on the edit option). Once you are done editing the submission, you may click submit and the submission should be changed.
- If you wish to remove completed exams from your instructor submissions page, you may do so by archiving them. Please do not archive exams that are yet to be administered, as students will still be able to see and schedule appointments for archived exams. If a mistake was made when creating an exam submission, please edit the submission rather than archiving and creating a new one. Please do not delete exam submissions, this erases the information permanently and it cannot be retrieved.
- Upload a word or PDF copy of the exam to your exam submission under file management at least 48 hours prior to the first scheduled exam. Reminder emails are sent 48 hours prior to the first appointment if the exam has not been received. If you are still writing the test and cannot upload it to RegisterBlast until closer to the exam date, please let the testing coordinator know.
- After all your students are finished testing, the testing coordinator will scan and upload the completed exams to each of your students individual appointments. You may retrieve this information by going to your history tab and searching for the student or searching by date. If your exam contains a scantron component, you will not receive a scanned PDF copy of the exam and will instead receive an email notifying you when your exams are ready for pick-up from our main office located in room 373 in Educational Sciences. Please allow up to 24 hours after the last exam is finished to receive the scanned exams or your notification email.
To use our services, all faculty and staff must agree to the following expectations as established by Testing and Evaluation Services:
- It is your responsibility to read and understand Testing and Evaluation’s instructions and expectations before creating any exam submissions.
- Notification that an exam submission has been created must be transmitted to your students at least one week prior to the exam. In this email, notify your students that they may schedule their appointments on their homepage for the course.
- You are responsible for monitoring who is signing up for your exam.
- Students not affiliated with the McBurney Disability Resource Center are not allowed to complete their exams at Testing and Evaluation Services. This includes make-up exams due to illness or other circumstances.
- A word or PDF document of the exam as well as any other exam documents must be uploaded to your exam submission on RegisterBlast at least 48 hours before the first scheduled exam. Testing Lab staff will send reminder emails if an exam is not received 48 hours prior to the first exam administration.
- Completed exams will not be scanned and uploaded to RegisterBlast until all students are completed with the test. Please allow up to 24 hours after the last student completes their exam to receive the completed exams.
- It is your responsibility to ensure that the exam is formatted properly and as such, we recommend that you review all materials for accuracy before uploading them.
- If a student requires adaptive technology, the testing materials must be sent as PDF documents.
- If the exam requires enlarged font, please upload a separate word or PDF document with enlarged font to your exam submission on RegisterBlast.
- If you encounter any difficulties when setting up an exam request, you will contact the testing coordinator immediately for assistance.
- Testing and Evaluation requires that you provide both a phone number and an email address that will be monitored during the exam time(s) in the event that students have questions. If the person monitoring the phone/email is someone other than the individual who requested the exam, please include that individual’s name as well. Our office will reach out to instructors if valid contact infomation is not provided with the exam request.
Faculty/Staff FAQ
To use RegisterBlast, instructors will need to enable it in their course navigation. Step-by-step instructions on how to enable a tool in a course navigation bar are available below.
- Navigate to your course homepage on Canvas
- On the sidebar of options, scroll down to and click on the settings link
- From the available tabs, click navigation
- Scroll down until you see Testing Center (RegisterBlast) under un-enabled navigation options, click three dots to edit course navigation and click enable
- You may drag and drop the navigation tool so customize where you want it to appear on your course homepage
- Click save to save link to Course homepage
- RegisterBlast navigation will now appear on options sidebar
- This process will need to be repeated for every course that you wish to connect to RegisterBlast. Once all of your courses have been connected, you may begin creating exam submissions.
If your exam has a scantron component (i.e. Incorporates a blue B5 or green X5 answer sheet), those exams are available for pick-up only at our main office located in room 373 Educational Sciences. If your exam does not have a scantron component, your students' completed exams will be uploaded to your instructor homepage on RegisterBlast. To access the exams, navigate to the 'History' tab on your instructor homepage and filter by date or name if necessary.
We do not accept late appointment requests within 48 hours of an exam start time. If a student expresses that they need accommodations for an exam and the exam start time is within 48 hours, they will either need to be accommodated within the department or you will need to create an exam submission that is more than 48 hours away (ideally 72 hours away to allow the student time to schedule their appointment).
If the exam start time is more than 48 hours away, you may either edit the submission to expand the time window allowed for students to schedule appointments or you may set up a separate exam submission for the student in question. If the exam start time is within 48 hours, please see the answer to the question above.
Please see the answers to the questions above.
A number of things might be happening.
- Start/End Time Discrepancy: Check to make sure that your start time and end time are far enough apart to account for time and a half and/or double time. We advise setting your end time to at least double the amount of time it would take to finish the exam to account for students who might have the double time accommodation.
- 4:00pm Scheduling Barrier: Check to see if the student would start the exam before 4:00 and finish after 4:00pm. Our system currently does not allow scheduling for exams that start before 4:00pm and that finish after 4:00pm. Your student would need to schedule a different start time that would have them finishing their exam before 4:00pm.
- No Seats Available: It may be that our schedule is simply full during the time that the student wishes to test. If a specific time is not showing for a student to schedule an appointment, that means that our seats are full at that time. Encourage them to schedule an appointment at a different time when we have seats available. If no seats are available, you may need to expand your time range or create a separate submission for this student to test at a different time.
Instructors have no time limit for creating, editing, or archiving exam requests. If you receive an error message, more than likely you are not filling out a required field on the submission builder. If you cannot determine why an exam submission is not going through, please contact the testing coordinator immediately.
You only need to create one exam submission per exam per course. For example, if you oversee a course that administers three exams and a final, you will need to create four exam submissions, three for the midterms and one for the final. If a student has an accommodation to take the exam outside of the specified exam window, you may create an exam submission specifically for that student as well.
Please email all students who have disclosed the need for accommodations as soon as possible after you generate an exam submission. Please also notify your students that they have 48 hours before the exam start time to schedule their appointments. Please give your students as much time as possible before the exam to schedule their appointments.
Testing and Evaluation is currently only able to offer its services to students affiliated with the McBurney Disability Resource Center who have testing accommodations. Please do not generate exam submissions for or share scheduling instructions with students without accommodations. If we notice that a student has scheduled an appointment and they do not receive testing accommodations, we will cancel the appointment.
Medical Sciences Center Satellite Site
Testing and Evaluation has opened a satellite testing site in the Medical Sciences Center, located at 1300 University Avenue. This site will operate from 9:00am to 6:00pm, Monday through Friday, and the latest exam appointment time that will be assigned to the Medical Sciences Center is 4:30pm. Any exams starting after 4:30pm will be administered at the Educational Sciences location.
- When a student schedules an appointment, their reporting location will be automatically assigned and will appear on their confirmation email and on their student profile in RegisterBlast. Maps to both locations are available on their student profile in RegisterBlast.
- Check-in at the Medical Sciences Center will occur in room B451. The most direct route to this room is through the Badger Market entrance located on Charter Street.
- We will avoid whenever possible assigning students who require mobility assistance to the Medical Sciences Center. However, if an accessible entrance is required, please contact the testing coordinator for more information.
- We will not be able to accommodate student or faculty preference when it comes to assigning students to the Medical Sciences Center. Students will be assigned to the Medical Sciences Center based on the needs of the testing lab.