Standardized Meeting Patterns

Standardized meeting patterns are required to balance the needs of all Departments/Faculties at the University of Calgary. They help ensure that students are able to take required courses and have the most flexibility in taking their option courses. These patterns are also critical to meeting the space needs of the entire University. Use of these patterns also dictates priority in room assignments. For specific regulation regarding these patterns, please see more details below.

The following are the established meeting patterns for all courses (lectures, labs, seminars or tutorials). Core standard meeting patterns in Centrally Scheduled Classrooms will be given priority during timetabling.  Requests that are outside of the standard meeting patterns may not be scheduled a classroom for the time requested. Meetings that are 50 minutes once or twice per week must be scheduled according to the start times below.

Evening sections begin at 16:00 (4 p.m.) or later on MWF and at 17:00 (5 p.m.) on TR. The start time must be the same each evening. 

Saturday sections must ensure that they meet the required GFC hours for the term.

  1. 50 minutes – 3 or 1 meeting(s)/week

    MWF
    8:00
    9:00
    10:00
    11:00
    12:00
    13:00
    14:00
    15:00

     

  2. 75 minutes or 50 minutes – 2 meetings/week

    TR
    8:00
    9:30
    11:00
    12:30
    14:00
    15:30

  3. 50 minutes – 4 or 5 meetings/week

    Any combination of MTWRF
    8:00
    10:00
    11:00
    13:00
    14:00
    16:00

  4. Notes

    Graduate Level Courses

    Graduate level courses are required to follow the meeting patterns if sections meet any of the following criteria:

    • includes undergraduate students
    • requesting to be scheduled in Centrally Scheduled classrooms
    • running concurrently or cross-listed

    TBA Listings

    Graduate course sections may be listed as TBA only until the end of the first week of classes.

    Undergraduate course sections may not be listed as TBA unless they comply with TBA guidelines.  

Interim meeting patterns are intended to be used for:

  • Lectures, Seminars, Tutorials and Labs with less than 75 capacity requesting to be scheduled in general assignment classrooms
  • Lecture sections with less than 100 students in departmental space; strongly encouraged for Laboratory, Seminar and Tutorial sections if Core patterns cannot be utilized
  • Course sections with greater than 75 who are unable to follow Core patterns

Courses following interim meeting patterns will be given room booking priority after courses scheduled according to Core meeting patterns.

Courses requesting to schedule components outside both Core and Interim meeting patterns must submit a  non-standard scheduling request for approval by the Registrar. Courses given approval to schedule according to non-standard patterns are still not guaranteed to be scheduled into a centrally scheduled classroom and will be given the last priority for classroom assignment.

View meeting patterns »

  1. Notes

    Graduate Level Courses

    Graduate level courses are required to follow the meeting patterns if sections meet any of the following criteria:

    • includes undergraduate students
    • requesting to be scheduled in Centrally Scheduled classrooms
    • running concurrently or cross-listed

    TBA Listings

    Graduate course sections may be listed as TBA only until the end of the first week of classes.

    Undergraduate course sections may not be listed as TBA unless they comply with TBA guidelines.

Approved Spring and Summer Session meeting patterns. Any courses that wish to be scheduled in a way different to these patterns must be submitted with approval from the Department Head in order to be scheduled in PeopleSoft.

For the upcoming Spring and Summer terms we would like to offer faculties greater flexibility in scheduling their courses with a block pattern option. There are two key requirements with this flexibility.

  1. Ensure your courses meet their GFC hours.
  • Ie. A typical 3 unit; H(3-0) course requires a total of 36 hours of instruction (take a typical 12 week term and multiply by 3 for total hours required). This means in a 6 week term, you need to schedule 6 hours per week of instruction. In a 3 week term you need 12 hours per week. A 6 unit; F(3-0) course would require 72 hours of instruction, thus 12 hours per week in a 6 week term and 24 hours per week in a 3 week term.
  • Take the number of meeting days per day of the week into account.
  • Schedulers should be wary of courses that meet on days that have fewer meetings in the term. If possible you should schedule extra hours to meet the total GFC hours. Ie. An extra hour would have to be added to a 3hour lab on Friday to make up for the loss of two instructional days. See number of meeting days below per term.
  • 3wk1 and 3wk2 terms are no longer an option, courses must be scheduled as NS for classes that wish to follow the old 3wk block. Departments do NOT need approval to follow the standard 3 wk blocks specified below. Anything that does not follow the specified dates must seek approval.
  • For non-prescriptive programs, schedulers must stick to an AM block, PM block or Evening block when scheduling courses.
  • The idea is that students are still able to take multiple courses. Most students taking courses in Spring take two courses, of which at least one tends to be from the faculty of arts. Majority of courses taught include a 3 hour lecture (80%) the others have either a 2 hour lecture or 1 hour lecture. We encourage labs and tutorials to also be scheduled into these blocks. (Note that a “prescriptive” program is considered to be one with which students cannot take any courses outside of the schedule provided by the faculty).

View spring and summer session schedule »

Example Schedules:

  1. A course that is 3 units; H(3-3-1) would have a schedule like MW Lecture 9-11:45am, TR lab 9-11:45am, and Friday tutorial 9:00-11:30 am (accounting for only 5 Fridays). This way a student can also take an afternoon course, and you can schedule an afternoon lab course as well. Section 2 could be the opposite with TR lecture and MW lab and students would not be advantaged/disadvantaged by the section they take. If you wish to avoid Fridays, then the ideal would be to put the tutorial twice a week from 8:00 AM to 8:50 AM.
  2. A course that is 3 units; H(3-3/2-1) if more than one section, we would recommend MR lectures and a Tuesday or Thursday lab that falls into the same AM or PM block. This is so that students in one section do not have more labs than another. You can decide in collaboration with the Department Head/Associate Dean which component should have more days than the other.

 

Notes:

It is expected that all courses will follow the standard meeting patterns.

  • All existing components of a course, as listed in the University Calendar, must be timetabled.
  • Graduate courses may be timetabled with TBA start times, but must have rooms and time assigned by the end of the first week of classes.
  • Courses that extend through both Spring and Summer session are expected to use the above meeting start times.
  • Courses that teach in a block format require prior approval of the Registrar and are expected to begin as close as possible to the start of the Spring session. Please note there is not a formal Block week in Spring or Summer sessions.
  • Requests for non-standard meeting patterns courses must have prior approval of the Registrar. These requests, with rationale, should be submitted for review prior to timetabling.  Please submit these requests to the Scheduling Office as soon as possible.
  • New courses are able to be offered in Summer once they have been approved by the Calendar and Curriculum subcommittee (and entered into PeopleSoft).
  1. Fall 2024

    6Wk 1 – September 3-October 17 – 31 days, (T&R falls on a Monday so it has been left out of the count, waiting to hear about T&R from ELT)

    6Wk 2 – October 18-December 6 – 31 days

    Fall Break – November 10-16

  2. Winter 2025

    6Wk 1 – January 13-February 28 – 30 days

    6Wk 2 – March 3 -April 11 – 30 days

    Winter Break – February 16-22

Room Booking Prioritization

For Fall and Winter terms, classrooms will be assigned based on the following priorities:

  1. Courses with Instructors who require medical accommodations will be scheduled first.
  2. Courses that adhere to Core Standard Patterns and Scheduling Distribution Guideline (SDG, see section below) are assigned second (back to back teaching assignments will be accommodated where the instructor is already assigned)
  3. Courses that adhere to Interim patterns and Scheduling Distribution Guideline are assigned third
  4. Departments that are in excess of their SDG will have courses randomly selected from the given time band, and assigned to the fourth priority group. In addition to courses that are in excess of their Department’s SDG, courses that have approved non-standard patterns will be scheduled in the same fourth priority group.

Where there are not enough classrooms to fit demand, courses that fall into the fourth priority group will be asked to either lower their capacity or move to another day and/or time first.

Courses that have specific technology or configuration requests will be assigned based on the level of priority they meet above. We will do our best to accommodate these requests, however can not guarantee them.

Requests for teaching in the Taylor Institute need to be submitted via the class comments to scheduling and indicated in the preferred teaching facility. Courses will be assigned into the TI based on the same scheduling criteria above, with the added criteria that when there are two or more courses requesting the same space at the same time, course capacity in relation to room capacity, the number of courses from a given unit already assigned to TI, as well as a review of the rationale for wanting the space will come into play when deciding which course is assigned the space. Once all specific requests for the TI have been assigned, all remaining space in the TI will be filled by other courses based on the prioritization listed above.

While all attempts will be made to mitigate class moves, courses scheduled in the TI in the Spring/Summer intersessions may occasionally be required to relocate for a day or two to a new location to meet other operational needs within the TI.