Transcript Academic Scheduling at Hamline

Academic Scheduling at
Hamline
What we do:
•Build all courses in Banner
•Make all course changes
•Make all course cancellations
•Notify students of changes to their schedules
•Maintain uniform scheduling policies,
guidelines, and procedures across all schools
What we don’t do:
•Classrooms
•Curriculum
What we’d like to do more of:
•Detailed schedule analysis to help us all
schedule smarter and less often
What you do:
•Plan your area’s yearly schedules
•Submit schedule changes for your area
•Review all schedules in your area
•Monitor your schedules for accuracy
What we all do:
•Be rock stars
•Care deeply about student success
How you can help:
•Be mindful
•Be analytical
•“Think globally, act locally.”
Now the Useful Information:
Things to Really Consider when Scheduling
•Balance offerings
•Have realistic enrollment expectations
•Make use of the course history information
•Monitor your schedules for accuracy
Realistic
enrollment
expectations,
you must
have
Why?
What do
you know
about it?
We get that you’re under pressure
to grow enrollments.
But we also need to be realistic about the
spaces we have and how we can best use them.
Some data:
•The average class requests a cap of 25 students
•The average class enrolls 19 students
•The average enrollment in a class with a cap of
25 is 16 students
•We have 50 classrooms on the St. Paul campus
•27 of them can accommodate 25+ students
•42 of them can accommodate 20+ students
•49 of them can accommodate 16+ students
Some data about classrooms:
•We have 16 seminar-style classrooms
•Most of them are in GLC
•Only 3 of them seat more
than 22 students
•Only two classrooms that seat 30 or fewer
students come equipped with desks (and one of
those rooms we try not to schedule)
•This fall we ran out of classrooms during the
12:50-2:20 time period. In April.
NdGT Says:.
Make use of the course history data
R&R provides you to set realistic
enrollment caps! By setting your cap
to 20 instead of 25, you give yourself
access to 15 additional classrooms.
That’s science!
By examining course history, you can see if there
are patterns to course enrollment.
•Are you always requesting 25 seats but consistently getting only 17
students?
• Do you have better yields when your class is offered at a particular
time or in a particular semester?
•Are you consistently competing with another class that students
need to take for a similar major or Hamline Plan?
By looking for patterns, you can start to schedule
your courses more effectively. And, as an Admin
Head, you’ll want to make use of these data to
help you really understand what your
departments are all about.
The key is to find a happy medium.
•It’s entirely possible for you to wind up requesting a classroom that
doesn’t exist. Certainly, you need to request the class as it needs to
be held, but be mindful of the resources we have.
•Give your class space for adequate enrollment, but be mindful of
the numbers you’ve brought in previously.
•“But this is the year our major will grow!” Is it?
•We have extremely limited classroom resources. In my memory, we
have run out of classrooms in at least one time period every fall and
spring semester. We depend on chairs and, now, Admin Heads to
give careful thought and consideration to how and when courses are
scheduled so we can both offer the classes our students need in the
most effective way possible and maximize the resources we, as a
campus, have.
OK, so now we know that we need to be realistic
in terms of how many students we can expect to
register for our classes.
It helps us all have access to appropriate classrooms and maximizes
our resources.
And we know that checking out the course
history spreadsheet can be really useful.
It can aid us in seeing what we’re scheduling well and what we could
improve on, and it can help us get to know the other departments
we work with a little better. All this can help us ensure that students
are getting the classes they need.
Now what?
Hold up, Andy. We're just
getting started.
Balance Your Offerings
Some data:
•We aren’t using our Class Timetable effectively
(you’re shocked, I know)
TIMETABLE BY MEETING TIME RANK
Monday
14
Tuesday
12
4
Wednesday
14
19
4
1
3
11:20-12:40 Convocation Hour
classes do not meet
2
22
6
25
10
4
1
11:20-12:40 Convocation Hour
classes do not meet
2
8
28
6
9
5
7
15
25
11
3
5
7
24
8
Friday
14
27
3
5
7
Thursday
12
91
8
25
13
53
Some more data:
•Which further illustrates timetable imbalance
1
1TR
9:40-11:10
11%
2
2TR
12:50-2:20
9%
3
3MWF
10:20-11:20
4
4MWF
9:10-10:10
7%
7%
5
5MWF
11:30-12:30
6
6TR
2:30-4:00
7
7MWF
12:40-1:40
5%
8
8MWF
1:50-2:50
4%
9
9W
evening
10
10M
evening
4%
3%
11
11T
evening
12
12TR
8:00-9:30
13
13R
evening
14
14MWF
8:00-9:00
15
15W
12:40-3:40
16
16All other meeting times
6%
5%
3%
2%
2%
2%
1%
29%
This means:
•20% of our classes happen Tuesdays and
Thursdays between 9:40-2:20
•25% of our classes happen MWF between
9:10-1:40
•28 of 54 areas have held classes during an 8am
time block in the last 5 years. This accounts for
224, or about 4%, of our offerings.
•Almost 30% of our courses are offered in nonstandard times
• (This is bad.)
We know, we know.
Students don’t like 8am classes.
Except that this actually seems to be a myth.
•Average enrollment in 8am classes is 23 students -- that’s 4 students
above our normal average.
•Average enrollment in once-weekly evening classes is 16 students. Same
goes for MWF 3:00-4:00.
•Average enrollment in TR 9:40-11:10 classes is 20. From 12:50-2:20 it’s 17.
These are our two most-scheduled class periods.
Don’t be afraid of “unpopular” time periods.
(They’re not actually all that unpopular.)
Some data:
•We cancel kind of a lot of classes
•27 of 54 undergraduate subject areas have
cancelled 10% or more of their sections
since 2009. This adds up to over 550 classes
out of approximately 2500 in the last 5
years.
•Altogether, over 750 courses out of 6700
have been cancelled in the last 5 years, or
just over 11%. This means we average
cancelling an entire semester’s worth of
classes every year.
Wait, WHAT?:
•Yes – every year we end up scheduling, and
subsequently cancelling, an entire semester’s
worth of courses
•They cancel for lots of reasons, but it all adds
up to one thing: extra work for all of us
Being thoughtful and deliberate at the outset
actually does save you time throughout the year.
Like, 750 courses worth of time.
Back to balancing:
•So what we're saying is:
•Don't just cluster all your offerings during
prime time
•Maximizing enrollments might not mean
what you think it means
•Do you really need 9 "pet" sections and 2
intro sections? Or should you be offering 5
intros and 5 electives?
•Put time and effort into the schedules you
submit. It frees your time and ours to be
doing more useful things.
Help with balancing:
•Major reports from R&R:
• Find out who your majors are and
what they need to take
• Departments you work with regularly
• Share your schedules with each other
• Classes "everyone" takes
• Check the enrollment history. Does
everyone need Stats? Is Stats reliably
offered at the same time every year?
Some useful data:
• We studied meeting patterns and there's no
correlation between time slot and course level.
Make Use of the History
We're just going to keep saying it until it's
apparent that people have started to use it
Check Your Work
(and ours)
This is (an old picture of) Michael Klecker. There is only one of him. There are
almost 60 people who are responsible for academic departments at Hamline, and
Michael schedules the classes for all of them. He is badly outnumbered, and he
does an amazing job, but there is still only one of him.
As much as we may want to, we don't -- and can't -- know the intricacies of your
program and faculty like you do. Please keep a close watch over your schedules
and let us know right away if something is amiss.
Questions
before we talk nuts and bolts?
Just to be fair to poor Michael.
Making the Schedule:
http://www.hamline.edu/offices/registration-records/faculty-staff/scheduling.html
Full Year
•Course Histories
•Memo
•Checklist
•Course Timetable
•Spreadsheet
Changes/Cancellations
•Forms
Weird Things?
•Email [email protected]
Questions ?