Scheduling Classes
1. Every semester departments must submit forms and materials requesting the courses to be taught by faculty in the semester to come. Generally, the deadline for submission is in the third or fourth week of the semester before, i.e., for scheduling Spring the deadline is usually around September 17 and for scheduling Fall, the deadline is usually around February 2. These deadlines are listed in the Administrative Calendar
2. The Deans will send out a packet of information and forms at the beginning of the semester. This will be accompanied by a memo with information such as the actual deadline dates for that semester. Also included will be some forms such as the chart of class type codes to use, time patterns with codes, and an archaic request form for less than 12 s.h. teaching commitment. If you schedule a faculty member for less than 12 s.h., you must submit this form to the Dean for approval. (Click here for an Excel version.)
Justifications for reduced load include authorized load reductions, exceptionally heavy workload (more than 375 FTE), exceptional research activity, administrative assignments, supervision of internships, or other assigned professional responsibilities or scholarly activities as deemed appropriate (that’s from the faculty handbook). Click here for a sample Request for Reduced Load to see how it might be done.
3. Having a class rotation plan helps enormously in preparing the schedules. This should list what courses are offered every fall and every spring and how many sections of each (if specific faculty members are tied to specific courses, that's useful to have written down); where other courses rotate around every third semester or whatever, then the cycle should be written down, so it's clear who's turn it is in which upcoming semester, to avoid repeating any course too often, and to be sure that all courses required of the major are offered frequently enough for students to graduate (see section on Curriculum Development).
4. Generally, faculty submit their requests for courses, times, and rooms to the Chair. Have them do this early in the semester or, if possible, at the end of the previous semester so you can make up a tentative schedule and have the department faculty review it for accuracy and conflicts. Circulate the schedule as widely as possible as early as possible before putting it into the computer-- the more different people look it over, the more problems they'll catch
Some things to try to juggle as you tweak the times that courses are offered: try to rotate upper-division courses through the evening hours for non-degree students to come and work on licensing requirements; try to offer the widest possible variety of schedules for multiple-section courses; try not to have required courses offered at the same time unless one is a prerequisite for the other
Be especially careful about student course conflicts. If you require freshmen to take MAXM 100 and MINM 150 in their first semester, you must be sure to schedule those two courses at different times. Also, if the two courses are in adjoining lecture hours, don’t ask for rooms in buildings at the opposite ends of campus. Keep a list of courses outside your department that are required of your majors, so you can check whether you're overlapping times for two required courses that students are likely to need to take in the same semester (e.g. the Education Methods courses and any capstone course).
Labs
usually take two or more time periods.
As such, if you schedule a lab on Wednesday from
Try to group classes with non-standard schedules in such a way as to not leave classrooms empty at peak hours (e.g. 4 s.h. courses that meet MTWR for 50 minutes should be paired starting at even hours, MTWR10-10:50, MTWR11-11:50. If you schedule the 11-11:50 class by itself, a classroom would be left unused from 10-11 during the peak TR10-11:15 slots.
Be sure the faculty tell you if they have specialized needs, like computers, A/C, or big classrooms. It can be a pain to find such spaces at a later date.
Check each faculty member's schedule to see where you might be able to give instructors the fewest number of course preparations, and to ensure that they don't have too many classes in a row (or too much time in between-- according to the individual's preference)
Try to
avoid scheduling all your classes in the most popular time periods, MWF 10-10:50,
11-11:50, 12-12:50, and 1-1:50. This
also includes TR 10-11:15, 12-1:15, and 2-3:15.
Faculty and students want those times but there aren’t enough rooms at
those times for every class. It also
creates huge parking problems for the students if they all show up at
Do not
schedule classes at
5. If, miraculously, everyone agrees on the tentative schedule, it’s time for the secretary to input the schedules using one of the Banner screens. It’s helpful to have him/her prepare a spreadsheet with the information Banner needs. Here’s an example. The CRN numbers will be generated by Banner. Lab and special rooms may be requested on Banner, but regular lecture rooms will be assigned. You can request a building. You may only assign the Instructor “STAFF” with permission from your Dean (for example, if you have an active search for that instructor in progress). If you have a lot of classes, be sure your secretary has enough time to do this before the deadline. It may take several days.
6. Changes to the schedule can be made after it's put in-- but once students have started signing up for the classes, you must take into account the inconvenience to them, and make sure everyone is informed of any changes as early as possible. To request changes to the schedule, chairs send a memo to their Dean (include CRN numbers for each course involved) specifying and justifying the changes. If/when the Dean approves, the approved memo goes to the Registrar. Changes made after the deadline for printing the Schedule of Classes will only be shown on the course web page and the page for web registration (get there from Registrar Services.)