Fall semester courses at Anadolu University's Open Education Faculty (AÖF), the distance learning faculty, began on 5 October, and the first exam comes seven weeks later: the midterms will be held on the weekend of 5–6 December 2026. For the hundreds of thousands of students who work, raise children or are studying for a second degree, these seven weeks pass with one question hanging over them: which course do I look at, and when? Here I go through all the exam dates for the fall and spring semesters, the deadlines to keep an eye on and a study routine that actually works when there is little time and a lot of material.
What are the AÖF exam dates for 2026-2027?
The fall semester midterms are on 5–6 December 2026 and the fall end-of-semester exams on 16–17 January 2027. In the spring semester, the midterms fall on the weekend of 10–11 April 2027 and the end-of-semester exams on 29–30 May 2027. The exams are spread across Saturday and Sunday; which course is sat on which day and in which session is stated on the exam entry document, which is published in the student system a few days before the exam.
When is the deadline for choosing an exam centre?
The deadline for choosing an exam centre for the midterm is 19 October 2026. Students who have moved, changed city or will be in another province on exam day need to update their choice by that date. Because no change is possible afterwards, every semester there are students who end up travelling hundreds of kilometres on exam day. Updating the choice takes a few minutes and is done in the same system as course registration renewal.
How much does the midterm count towards the final grade?
In the open education system, the final grade for a course is made up of 30 percent of the midterm and 70 percent of the end-of-semester exam. That ratio tells you two things. First, a low midterm mark does not finish off the course; the final carries most of the weight. Second, a high midterm mark lightens the load in the final: a student who scores 80 needs a noticeably lower mark in the final to pass the course. Going into the midterm half-prepared on the grounds that there is always the final means studying the same course twice as hard in January.
What are the questions like?
Each course exam consists of multiple-choice questions, and the questions are based largely on the learning outcomes of the units in the course book. The midterm covers the units from the first half of the semester, while the end-of-semester exam covers all of them. A sizeable share of the questions follow the same logic as the "your turn" exercises and the review questions at the end of each unit, so not skipping those while reading the book translates directly into marks.
How do you study five courses in seven weeks?
For a student with three or four hours a week, the realistic routine looks like this: one session per course each week, and one or two units per session. Since the number of units covered by the midterm ranges from four to seven depending on the course, seven weeks is enough for most courses. Instead of reading the book from cover to cover, start with the unit summary, then the review questions, and only then the detailed text; this halves the time, because once you have seen the question you know what to look for in the text.
The last two weeks should go to past exam questions. Anadolu University's student system provides the exam questions from previous semesters course by course, and these questions show how much weight the exam gives to each unit. A student who has worked through three semesters' worth of questions will often get a "this looks familiar" feeling in the exam; the feeling is right, because the question pool is tied to the learning outcomes and the outcomes do not change.
Where does a working student find the time?
Forty-five minutes a day adds up to thirty-five hours over seven weeks, which is enough in total for the midterm units of five courses. The problem is not the amount of time but the fact that it comes in fragments. Reading the unit summary on your phone on the way to work, solving review questions for half an hour in the evening, an hour of consolidated revision at the weekend: put these three together and it is possible to prepare without ever sitting down with the book. For those who struggle to concentrate, the article on uninterrupted focus blocks explains how to study intensively in short stretches.
What if you miss the midterm?
There is no make-up exam for the midterm in open education. A student who does not sit it gets a midterm mark of zero, and the course grade then comes entirely from the end-of-semester exam, which means a higher mark is needed in the final to pass. So missing one weekend does not cost you the course, but it does add to the load in January. This is also why students who will be in another province on exam day need to update their exam centre choice in time: the midterm is held once, with no second attempt.
What should you watch out for on exam day?
Nobody is admitted to the exam hall without the exam entry document and photo ID; printing the document in advance beats hunting for a printer on the morning of the exam. The course changes between sessions and the time for each course is limited; rather than getting stuck on one question, mark it, move on and come back at the end, which saves marks. In open education exams four wrong answers cancel one correct one, so leaving a question blank when you have no idea does less damage than marking at random. Where you can narrow the options down to two, guessing pays off over the long run.
The six weeks up to the January finals, unlike the midterm, cover all the units. Working out how many marks you need in each course as soon as the December results arrive, and dividing the January study time accordingly, is the shortest route to closing the semester in one go.