Scheduling Training

1. All calendar changes should be made in PeopleSoft prior to scheduler access being opened. This is to ensure that calendar changes are implemented for the following year. Given the compactness of calendar submissions for this year, some calendar changes may have to be made once access has been opened.

    

2. All academic dates need to be approved and implemented in PeopleSoft.

    

3. Scheduling needs to process what is called the “course roll”. A copy of the existing schedule is made and converted to the terms for next year. All instructors, classrooms and courses that didn’t match standardized meeting patterns are not copied into the new term and must be resubmitted for approval and rescheduled.

    

4. Once the new terms have been created, access for department schedulers may be opened.

    

5. Department schedulers will have up to six weeks to edit, add and delete courses based upon the schedule they wish to implement in the new terms.

    

6. Department Schedulers should be consulting with scheduling during this time period regarding any significant changes in demand for the new term. In some cases there may not be the ability to support additions of large lecture sections or increased demand during certain periods of the day.

    

7. Department schedulers are required to review their schedules prior to submission. Department schedulers should be checking for:
   1. Course conflicts
   2. Appropriate days and times of meetings (look for classes that may be scheduled for only 15 minutes or for greater than four hours. Also check for start times making sure they are between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.)
   3. GFC hours: ensure that the appropriate components are scheduled along with the required amount of instruction time
   4. Course caps: compare to previous years, number of failing students and current intake of students. Do the numbers seem appropriate? Compare with actual room capacities, see if your request is likely to find a room recognizing that assignment priority is based on utilization rates.
   5. Combined sections
   6. Class association numbers (each lecture should have a unique number and if lab/tutorial registration association doesn’t matter, assign them the number 999)
   7. Class Notes vs Class Comments

       

8. Once access is closed to departments:
   1. 1. Scheduling has six weeks to review and consult with departments regarding their submitted drafts.
      2. Departments will only be able to make changes to the schedule of classes under the enrollment control tab in maintain schedule of classes. Departments will be able to cancel, stop enrollment, or make sections tentative. At this point all instructor additions or changes will have to be updated in the Schedule Class Meetings tab.

          

9. Scheduling will then proceed with scheduling courses into rooms. While departments may request specific rooms for courses, priority will be given on the basis of space utilization (i.e. courses that have standard meeting patterns and have greater than 80% capacity of the space will be given priority access to such space).

    

10. The schedule will go live one to two weeks prior to registration. Once the schedule goes live, in order to change the course time of a class, departments must get approval from the Dean or designate and the Registrar to change that time.

1. GFC hours and components - such as a 3.0 credit (formerly H or Half course) was indicated as H (3-1-2T) in the calendar, which means 3 hours of lecture, 1 hour of lab and 2 hours of tutorial must be taught per week for 12 weeks. If it is a 6.0 credit (formerly F or Full course) it must be taught either double those hours over 12 weeks or must be taught in an A and B format over two semesters or 24 weeks. A 1.5 credit (formerly Q or Quarter course) may be taught over 6 weeks as per the designated hours. Please refer to the Calendar for more information regarding GFC hours.
2. Pre-requisites/Co-requisites/Anti-requisites/Calendar Notes - These are determined by the calendar and must be set-up and double checked for every course.
3. Class Schedule - requires days of week, hours of day that the course is desired to be taught in; or it may be designated as TBA if it meets the TBA requirements. PeopleSoft has been set-up such that only approved patterns may be entered, everything else will require an approval and override from scheduling. Schedulers may indicate desired rooms or department space when setting up the schedule.
4. Course Capacity - All courses must have a capacity in order to ensure a room and enrolment. It is recommended that departments analyze previous demand for courses and use that as a predictor for the upcoming year. There is also going to be potential support software available for departments to use in completing such analysis.
5. Class Notes - Indicate information required for students to make an informed decision for enrollment
6. Instruction Mode - Important for indicating to students and scheduling the expected mode of instruction for a given course. This field is also used for research and determining the expected number of scheduled GFC hours on campus. 

A scheduler checklist is available as an Additional Resource under the Timetabling training tools. Some key points for schedulers to review include:

Alternating Labs
Please ensure that you set up class sections that have alternating labs using the Alternate Weeks Page in the Schedule Class Meetings component.

Block week courses
If dates are different than the designated block week dates, then you must gain approval for non-standard and indicate on the class comments page.

Class Associations
If you are offering more than one lecture for your course, please make sure that your class associations are numbered numerically, starting at 1 for Lecture 01, 2 for Lecture 02, and so on. If you plan on grouping lec/lab/tutorial combinations for students to register in, the associations for the lab and tutorials must match the corresponding Lecture. If it doesn’t matter which component a student registers in, then each lab/tutorial/seminar may be numbered 999. This is also a must for all topics courses.

Combined Sections
Please review your combined sections to ensure that they are set-up properly.

Course Location
If the course is being scheduled into departmental space, it must be indicated as such in PeopleSoft under the Course Meetings tab prior to the beginning of classes. It is important that all courses have assigned classrooms for the purposes of emergencies and campus planning. Courses scheduled in general assignment classrooms, cannot be guaranteed the same space year to year.

Course Sections
Please ensure that all seminar courses have the S listed before the class section number, this also applies to labs, make sure they have a B, tutorials a T. The lectures do not require an L before the class section number, ie. S01, B01, T01, no L before the 01.

Courses over two terms
To schedule a course over multiple terms, you must indicate each section with an A or B.

GFC Hours
Ensure that your course is scheduled according to GFC hours or students will not be able to register in the class. Double check that the hours and section types match the GFC description.

Group Study Program (formerly called Credit Travel Study)
Must be scheduled as GSP. If offered during non-standard dates is must be selected as NS and under the Class notes tab, you should make a note of where the course is going to be offered.

Instructors
All instructors must be identified for every course. Departments must ensure that their access is set to ‘Grade’ so that they have access to their faculty center. Coordinators must also be set with access to ‘grade’ so that they can view sections. Do not use app & post, use the grade access. For courses with alternating labs or tutorials, the instructor must be added to each section. If you want the Instructor name to show in the class search, make sure that the “Print” box is selected.

Non-Standard Courses
Courses that do not follow the regular academic dates must be approved by both the Dean and Registrar and scheduled as NS.

Teaching Requirements
ie. Accommodation or technical requirements for a room may be indicated on the class comments page (not the room features) and they will be taken into consideration when scheduling rooms.

Wait Lists
If you use a waitlist, ensure that a waitlist is added to every component of the course with the number of spots added to the lecture equal to the total number of spots added for each lab or tutorial.

You cannot use waitlists and Auto enroll into another section simultaneously. Use one or the other.

Web based Sections
If the course is web-based, you need to choose offsite in the campus drop down menu and then web-based in the location drop down menu. Instructors must also be changed to web-based in the instruction mode drop down menu.

The majority of course scheduling is conducted in Maintain Schedule of Classes. There are several job-aids available with the details regarding how to use PeopleSoft. Before you begin work in scheduling, it is recommended that you download your Detailed Class Schedule and review the data for your department that is currently in the system. You may either download and print or download to CSV this information for your analysis.

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The Detailed Class Schedule will be your most important tool for reviewing and evaluating your schedule. Refer to the Job Aid for detailed information on how to download the detailed class schedule. If you are unsure how to read this file, contact scheduling and we would be happy to walk you through the details.

When you are ready to begin your course scheduling, your first step should be to delete all courses and sections that will not be offered in the upcoming year. Then begin making changes to existing courses and finally add all your new course offerings for the year. As you go, and once you are finished you can check your work using the Detailed Class Schedule Report.

All undergraduate, informal topics courses that are not independent study must be submitted for approval.

If you know that you would like to offer an informal topics course in the upcoming term, and you have not yet received approval, then you may schedule the Shell class as desired. When approved, Scheduling will add the appropriate topic number to the shell.

If the course has been pre-approved and the topics course is pre-existing, you may select the appropriate Course Topic ID using the search and select function. Any topics that are not being offered this next year must be deleted.

Departments are responsible for managing their own topic numbers. This is particularly important when a given topic number already exists in the Course Catalog, and is going to be re-used. In order to ensure the accuracy of student transcripts, no topic number should be re-used within a period of four years when a different topic title is to be offered.

It is important that you do NOT select a topic ID under the Meetings tab as this has been found to cause errors.

Departments are required to monitor and verify their topic numbers before submitting requests to scheduling. In order to verify your topic numbers you need to view previous course offerings in 'Maintain Schedule of Classes' or refer to your existing department tracking method. It is important that topic numbers are not re-used within a four-year period because whatever the current topic number is, is what will print on a student transcript.

The following instructions must be followed in order to verify your previous topic course offerings:

Initially, all terms during the past 4 years must be examined. Specifically:
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1. Select ‘in’ next to ‘Term’.
2. Type all terms for the last 4 years, separated by a comma, with no spaces.
3. Hint:  Presently (Aug 2014), this would equal ‘2107,2111,2113,2115,2117,2121,2123,2125,2127,2131,2133,2135,2137,2141,2143,2145,2147,2151’. (You can copy & paste from this document if you wish!)
4. Enter the ‘Subject Area’ and ‘Catalog Nbr’.
5. Click ‘Search’

 Once the results appear:
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1. Click on the row for the first term.

Once the ‘Maintain Schedule of Classes’ window is displayed:
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1. Click ‘View All’ to see all sections offered during the first term to be searched.
2. Scroll down the list to view each iteration of the ‘Course Topic ID’ to ensure the number you’re intending to use hasn’t been offered.
3. At the bottom of each screen, click on ‘Next in List’ to move to the next term.
4. Once the ‘Next in List’ button is grayed out, you have reached the end of all applicable terms to search.
5. If your decimal number is not found please submit your topic course request to schedule@ucalgary.ca.  You must indicate in your email that you have verified that the topic number has not been used in the past 4 years, or else we will be unable to process your request.
6. If your decimal number is found in the last 4 years you will have to begin the process again to search for another unused topic number.

Given the detailed requirements to search for topic numbers, it is recommended that each department establish and maintain a current and accurate record of which topic numbers have been offered. In this way, searching can be minimized and topic IDs can be managed efficiently.

The scheduling office must receive record of approval for concurrently offered or cross-listed courses. We need this record of approval so that we can verify that all concurrently set-up courses have been scheduled properly and that the ones that are set-up that way were meant to be set up as combined sections.

If you intend on offering two courses concurrently or cross-listed you need to:

1. Indicate in the Class Comments page : To be scheduled in the same room as course XXX.
2. Both courses must be scheduled for the same session, days and times.
3. Set-up the courses as Combined Sections. See Section 8, page 73 of the Student Administration Training Guide for Timetabling.
4. You will need to check the Combined Sections Table and use the Identify Combined Sections for reviewing if these have been set-up properly