The Scheduling Guide

Course

A course contains configuration settings that determines how a class is scheduled. English I, Physics, and Algebra, are examples of courses that can contain parameters governing how they are scheduled. A course, in essence, does not explicitly refer to what appears on a finished schedule, but refers to the specifications for how the schedule is created.

Class / Section

A class or section is an instance of a course. A course may have one or more sections. Each section may occur at different times in different rooms with different teachers. Sections are what appear on a schedule and are necessary in order to create student schedules.

Block

Blocks are time-based containers that sections occur in. A block occurs at a defined time each day, and during that time, multiple course sections can meet.

Scheduling

Scheduling generally refers to the functions performed by Generate Master Schedule and Generate Student Schedule. Each function is purposed with helping to automate schedule creation and student placement.

School Years refer to the terms and timelines in which classes are in-session. Each academic year will have a School Year. For example, the School Year for classes that begin in Fall 2017 and ends in Spring 2018 is the 2017-2018 School Year.

School Years are created and published by Platform Managers.

Tip: Read more about Terms and School Years

Blocks are segments of time in which course sections are scheduled. For example, A, B, C, D, E, F might refer to 6 blocks. In each Block, a course section will occur. Course sections might appear 3 times in a single block, for example, but with different teachers and rooms. Blocks are later associated with Meeting Times and Schedule Sets to determine the times and sequence in which they may occur on certain days.

Blocks are created by Academic Group Managers.

Create each block required in your schedule. Blocks for Lunch and Breaks should also be considered.

Tip: Read more about Blocks

Buildings and Rooms determine the locations in which courses occur. They both communicate location information and determine several additional factors, including:

• Max Room Capacity – How many students can be allowed in this room for a course?

• Room Types – Which departments or class types should be scheduled in certain rooms and buildings?

Buildings and Rooms are created by Platform Managers. Create rooms for each area a course will occur within a building, determine the maximum number of students that should be scheduled in that room, and associate each room with a type to ensure specific classes are scheduled in corresponding rooms. These fields are used by Scheduling to automatically associate course sections with rooms.

Tip: Read more about Buildings and Rooms

Scheduling Preference refers to the emphasis given to each department’s assignment to certain rooms and buildings over one another. Departments with a lower number (ex. 1) will be scheduled before departments with a higher number (ex. 2). This results in better scheduling availability options for departments that are scheduled first.

Tip: For departments with courses that are often paired with another course (ex. Science with Science Lab), consider giving those departments (ex. Sciences) a lower number to ensure they get the best possible scheduling scenario.

Department scheduling preference is set by a Platform Manager.

Set the priority for each department to determine in what order courses are scheduled, with 1 as the highest priority and 10 as the lowest priority.

Tip: Read more about Department Scheduling Preference

Course Priority Category

Categories work in the same way department scheduling does; certain categories can have a higher or lower priority than others. Therefore, this allows courses to have higher scheduling preference over others within a department.

For example, assume there are two Course Priority Categories: Core Courses and Electives. If Core Courses are given a higher priority over Electives, than Core Courses will be scheduled before Electives. Courses with the same priority are scheduled in order depending on department priority and the number of sections. Read more about Class scheduling order. To create and modify course priority levels, modify the Course Priority table.

Courses can also be excluded from the Generate Master Schedule and Generate Student Schedule processes. Exclusion may be ideal for manually enforcing courses that must occur within specific timeslots.

Teacher Scheduling

Courses can be associated with specific teachers. Teachers can also be allotted a maximum amount of sections to teach. Lastly, teachers can have a Standard, Low, or High priority. Priority results in High priority (1) teachers being scheduled before others with Standard (2) and Low (3) denominations.

Course Sections

Sections refers to the available instances of a course in the schedule. A course with 3 sections equates to three separate instances of a course occurring at the same or different times in the same or different blocks.

1. Number of sections – Determines how many times a course occurs in the schedule.

2. Section size – Determines the class size of each section occurrence.

The Minimum, Target, and Maximum fields correspond with the Section size and Number of sections fields. For example, what is the Minimum Number of sections that may occur? What is the ideal (target) number of course section? And what is the Maximum Number of Sections?

Building and Room Preference

Determine which Room Types and Buildings a course should be scheduled in. Include homerooms for teacher resources determines whether homerooms associated with a teacher should be considered as a viable room for fulfilling scheduling requirements.

Block Preference

Block preference helps to categorize which courses are paired with specific blocks. Because blocks are associated with meeting times in a schedule set, you can use this preference to schedule courses at certain times.

Note: Note: If you select blocks preferred blocks, Generate Master Schedule will not schedule sections outside of your selection. Therefore, if a section cannot be scheduled in a preferred block, Generate Master Schedule will not attempt another block.

Teacher Schedules refer to parameters set within teachers’ profiles. These parameters include:

• Homeroom: Determines which room is a teacher’s homeroom.

• Number of Sections: Determines the maximum number of course sections a teacher should teach.

These settings are exclusively related to the Scheduling process.

Tip: Read more about Profiles

Once a course is configured, it can then be offered. Offered courses are ones that are eligible to become course requests, which in turn can then be scheduled. Blank checkboxes are unoffered, checked boxes are offered, and locked boxes are courses that have had attendance taken.

Tip: Read more about Offered courses

The in-bulk solution looks at the target number of sections. If that value is unavailable, it will divide the number of course requests by the target section size to produce the amount of sections for a course.

Create sections in-bulk provides two options: create based solely on target number of sections or calculated. Both settings will require that values are entered on the course record scheduling tab. If you select to create based off of target, then you only need target sections for the course defined. If you select calculated, define the section size values on the course configuration tab. Additionally, with calculated, there are additional field selections when calculated is more or less than the max number, as well as when no course requests are found. Therefore, ensure the min/target/max section options are defined.

Rollover involves taking the courses and sections from current school year and duplicate them into the subsequent year. This mode is ideal for schedules that do not change between years.

The Master Rollover is found in Core > _{System Tools} > Master Rollover.

General Information

• What days of the week classes will be held.

• When user roles can access the schedule information.

• The duration of the how long the schedule set is used.

• The fields under Date Span allow to supply:

  • Max Days determines times per week classes meet. If you meet Monday through Friday, then enter 5.

  • Max Weeks determines if a schedule should shift every week. If a schedule should be one set of blocks one week, and then another set of blocks a second week, enter 2. If the schedule remains the same each week, then enter 1.

  • Start Day and Start Week determine when the schedule begins. If classes should begin on the Begin Date and week, enter 1.

Meeting Times

Meeting Times allow you to specify class start and end times for each calendar day classes are held.

Meeting Times correspond with Blocks. For each period that occurs in the day, you will determine in the Rotation tab when it begins and ends.

For the example, we’ll have three patterns: one on Monday, one for Tuesday and Thursday, and one for Wednesday and Friday.

Monday will have all classes occur, therefore Meeting Times are generally shorter.

Tuesday/Thursday and Wednesday/Friday will have the same Meeting Times, but each Meeting Time will have a different block associated with it.

Rotation

The Rotation tab lets you associate blocks with Meeting Times. If different blocks occur on different days of the week, then you can specify that here. In addition, you can also specify if even the same blocks occur each day, but at different times throughout the week.

The Rotation tab has two buttons for configuring the type of rotation pattern.

For our block schedule, because we specified 3 under General > Date Span > Max Days, there are three sets of our Meeting Times that we can associate with the different blocks that occur on those days. Therefore, in this example, we’ll have all our blocks occur on Monday, and then a subset of all our blocks occur on Tuesday/Thursday and Wednesday/Friday for a longer period.

• Per Block – Meeting Times are associated with blocks. Ideal for a schedule that regularly reoccurs in a predefined order. Necessary to use Scheduling.

• Per Section – Meeting Times are associated with course sections. Ideal for a random schedule. Random schedules must be manually configured. For Random Schedules, under Meeting Times, specify every possible Meeting Time that can exist in your schedule. A Schedule Manager will than manually associate Meeting Times with course sections; incompatible with Scheduling.

Schedule rules let you apply additional logic to how certain courses are scheduled. You can create rules that let you:

• Have two courses occur at the same time in the same block (tied courses)

• Make a course occur immediately before or after another course (course pairs)

• Make two courses that occur in different terms occur in the same block in each term (linked courses)

Tip: Read more about Schedule Sets

Special Days are variances to a traditional schedule to accommodate for special events. Special Days might include a two-hour delay schedule (due to snow storms), pep rally schedules, midterm and final exam schedules, and so forth.

In addition to specifying the exact schedule for each Special Day, you can determine the behavior that occurs after a Special Day. For example, should the day that is being replaced with a Special Day be bumped to the following day, therefore bumping that day? Or should the day be skipped altogether?

Note: Special Days cannot be applied to random (Per Section) schedules. Additionally, daily attendance recorded on a Special Day results in no attendance of record being recorded.

Tip: Read more about Special Days

Before running Generate Master Schedule, you may decide to manually schedule courses to precisely align them with departmental requirements. If so, you must ensure that Exclude course from generate master schedule processing in the course record for each manually scheduled course is enabled.

Tip: It is highly recommended that if it is know who the teacher should be, when the class will be taught and/or what room it will be in, then it should be manually scheduled.

Then, visit Set Section Schedule in onCampus to specify the block, teacher, and room for each manually assigned course. Keep in mind that the block corresponds to the Meeting Time established in the Schedule Set.

Note: Scheduling is only for Academic groups. Lunch and Breaks are Activity groups and should be scheduled manually.

The Conflict Matrix communicates potential problems with relationship between student course requests and the proposed master schedule overall.

In the leftmost column, all courses will appear. When selected, in the right column, courses will appear that conflict with the one selected. Students that are requested both courses will appear in the # of potential request conflicts. Due to the conflict, the # of potential request conflicts communicates how many students will be unable to take either course.

To resolve this, choose either to create a new section for either course or assign one course to a different block.

Scheduling Snapshots record the blocks, sections, and teachers in an existing master schedule. These snapshots allow you to maintain those specifications when running Generate Master Schedule. Therefore, users can generate new schedules without fear of losing previous Generate Master Schedule run results.

Terms and school levels to include

Term Settings determine when each user type can create course requests, how long they can submit requests, and how many course requests they must select per term. Each grade level can have different Signup Begin and End dates and different Minimum and Maximum course enrollment counts.

Tip: To maximize success, try generating a schedule for one school level and term at a time.

Scheduling snapshots

Scheduling snapshots let you restore a master schedule if a subsequent one produced by Generate Master Schedule contains less desirable results.

Before clearing or scheduling any data will record a snapshot prior to when Generate Master Schedule is initiated, and After sections have been scheduled will record a snapshot once Generate Master Schedule has completed scheduling sections. Effectively, these settings create a before and after picture of the master schedule.

Information to Schedule

Information to schedule provides additional refinement over scheduling behavior by enforcing specified stipulations.

The two columns, clear out existing and schedule, can be used in tandem together or independently. Clear out existing will delete teacher, block, or room data stored in the current master schedule. Schedule will schedule teacher, block, or room data in empty slots in the master schedule. Used together, these settings will erase all data and schedule new data in place of what was deleted.

Clear out existing does not apply to scheduling snapshots.

Under Schedule meetings, you can further enforce what is scheduled based on defined requirements. Of the options included, Regardless of what else can be scheduled will promise results that are not dependent on preciseness. For example, if a time can be scheduled, but a teacher cannot, then Generate Master Schedule will still attempt to schedule the course with a different teacher. The remaining options let you determine how room and faculty availability should be emphasized in the process.

Class scheduling order

Class scheduling order determines the order in which courses are scheduled. Both behavior options revolve around course classification to determine order, but each option puts different priority on how course classification is emphasized.

Course classification refers to the number of sections associated with a course. If a course has one section, it is a singleton. If a course has three sections, it is a tripleton. Courses with less sections are often emphasized over ones that have more.

Select a scheduling order option that best fits the type of courses you have available. For example, schools with courses that have fewer sections might select Course classification is the most important data while schools that have classes containing many sections that should be scheduled equally might select Priority is put on all the data of a course.

Scheduling rules to follow

Both Linked courses and tied courses relate to data entered into individual course records.

The difference between Follow and Try is that Follow will only schedule a course if all conditions of a rule can be met. Try will schedule a course if only some of the conditions of a rule can be met.

Courses to include

Courses to include will only schedule courses for the departments, grade levels, specific courses, or custom lists within the school level and term you specify. When set to all, Generate Master Schedule will schedule all permissible academic courses.

Results from the current master schedule will appear under Master schedule, communicating how many courses were offered, courses without sections, and how many courses are missing teachers, blocks, and rooms. Select any of these communication headers to explore precisely which conflicts arose.

Note that these counters will persist even after rectifying issues with missing teachers, blocks, and rooms. The information presented reflects data captured the last time Generate Master Schedule was ran. The information presented does not reflect changes made by the user after Generate Master Schedule runs.

School level and term

Select which terms and school levels should have schedules generated. If you have already generated and finalized a schedule for a school level, consider unchecking it to avoid overwriting those results when you generate the next master schedule.

Tip: To maximize success, try generating a schedule for one school level and term at a time.

Scheduling snapshot

Scheduling snapshots let you restore a student schedule if a subsequent one produced by Generate Student Schedule contains less desirable results.

Before scheduling students will record a snapshot prior to when Generate Student Schedule is initiated, and After sections have been scheduled will record a snapshot once Generate Master Schedule has completed scheduling sections. Effectively, these settings create a before and after picture of the master schedule.

Information to Schedule

When Generate Student Schedule runs, you can specify if it should Clear student enrollments data for the active student schedule for the selected school year and term.

Include alternate requests when necessary will consider Alternate courses students have requested if their primary course request cannot be fulfilled.

Settings to Follow

Determine how student courses requests are prioritized. Depending on your selections here, students will be scheduled into course requests that meet the priority threshold.

For example, if AP courses have a higher course priority than accelerated courses, then a student who requests both will be placed into AP courses first. If two courses have the same course priority, then Generate Student Schedule will look at the second most important factor.

Scheduling rules to follow

Determine whether preestablished scheduling rules should impact student schedules.

For example, if you require students who take one course (ex. Algebra) to take a complimentary course in the following term (ex. Geometry), then setting Follow for Linked courses would enforce the corresponding rule.

Likewise, if you require certain courses to occur at the same time, you would set Follow for Tied courses. An example of a Tied courses might be an English course and a History course. Both, together, might make up an American Studies course, but are taught by individual teachers at the same time in the same room, block, and section. This solution would allow for this scenario to be automated, and for students to be enrolled into both courses accordingly.

Courses to include

Determine which courses Generate Student Schedule should schedule students into. The courses included will additionally be dependent on the school level and term you’ve selected in the preceding settings.

Students to include

Students to include Select which students among those who submitted course requests in the selected school level and term should be scheduled into courses.

The Fulfillment Matrix illustrates the number of course requests for a specific course (Requested) and the number of students from that total that have been enrolled. Its purpose allows you to deduce which courses and students require your attention.

To get started, look for courses that have counts higher than 0 in the Unfulfilled column. The number in that column corresponds to the number of students that requested the course, but could not be scheduled into it. Click on the course title to view a more in-depth look at each at-conflict student.

View enrollments communicates the total statistics for each enrollment count per department per block. Use these enrollment counts to assess enrollment projections or yearly fluctuations in course activity.

For detailed specifics on the most recent Generate Student Schedule session, view results will communicate the fulfillment success rate along with other settings that governed assignment.

Tip: Read more about Managing Student Schedules