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User Education Session

11 October 2005

Class Scheduling in myUNSW

UNSWStudentServices

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Objectives

To provide a context for the changes to course and class maintenance in NSS and myUNSW.

To enable staff in faculties to define and record class scheduling data for their unit, for publication and enrolment purposes.

To introduce Class Schedulers to the new myUNSW Class Maintenance Service and demonstrate the functionality through a scenario based ‘guided tour’.

To provide some high level advice on future developments and directions.

This presentation is part of the Student Services User Training, Education and Support program.

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The Context

Increasing need for completeness (Student self-service enrolment, University wide timetable, WebCT-Vista requirements)

Increasing need for accuracy and forward planning (HESA legislative course publishing requirements)

Going forward, the census date and EFSTL value for a unit of study must be published by a higher education provider by:

1 April of a year for units of study with a census date in the second period of that same year (1 July – 31 December)

1 October of a year for units of study with a census date in the first period of the subsequent year (1 January - 30 June)

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myUNSW and Class Management

A Fundamental shift:

Previously staff interacted with the myUNSW Staff Portal Academic Admin functions in an enquire-only mode. The new class management service takes us into a new era of using myUNSW as an update facility for a core academic administration function.

Provides better support for new staff and irregular users – simplified and unified service.

Workflow based process with irrelevant fields hidden, providing integrated page level Online Help, better validation and including useful features such as colour coded ‘alerts’.

myUNSW also provides easy access to online resources such as policies, procedures and reference files (such as the Online Handbook).

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A series of myUNSW releases …

Current ‘Class Scheduling’ release(October 2005):

Allows set up of class structures for enrolment readiness and for publication so that students may forward plan for enrolment.

Multiple, sequenced pages for detailed entry/update of all fields

Single page summary of status, capacities and enrolments for all classes in a course, with the ability to change status and capacities for any or all. Enables efficient monitoring of demand in real time, and management of quotas.

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Current Release (Class Scheduling – Oct 2005)

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Enrolment Management Release (December 2005)

Will include facilities to:

Close a class – including system-generated notification to students that they must select another [probably 1st, 2nd and final warning].

Move students – all or some students in one class moved to another class within the same course and activity–allows better support for balancing and rationalising classes where necessary.

Message – auto generate emails (text only) to students within a class.

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Preparing for Timetabling Release (~ April 2006)

‘Course catalogue and timetabling requirements’ release. To include:

Relevant course catalogue fields.

Preparation for future terms (activity group structure).

Collection of additional data required for centralised timetabling e.g. anticipated enrolments, room requirements, eLearning needs etc.

Ability to specify planned schedule on week-to-week rather than term / session date basis to allow for variations within a session

e.g. non-standard teaching lengths and patterns, interleaved classes.

Improvements to some areas

e.g. exclusions, repeat rules, which are currently not well handled.

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Towards University-wide timetabling …

myUNSW will be tightly coupled to Syllabus-Plus for University wide timetabling.

Only a core set of central users will interact directly with Syllabus-Plus Course Planner.

School/faculty interaction will occur via the myUNSW interface including

Ongoing requests for new classes,

Closing classes and return of booked rooms,

Changed requirements etc.

Reports

Schools / faculties specify learning & teaching facility requirements for formal courses as part of timetable planning

No room booking requests

Casual room bookings remain a manual process managed by CATS

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New Class Timetable site

www.timetable.unsw.edu.au

Drivers:

To make class schedule data more accessible without need to log into myUNSW e.g. for prospective cross institutional/non award students.

Remove reliance on republishing course pages in Online Handbook when sessions of offering change.

More ‘at your fingertips’ enquiry access for all students, including ability to more easily search for available offerings in Summer and Winter session.

Site is refreshed on a nightly basis.

Displays active, stop further enrolment and tentative classes, but not cancelled classes.

If tentative classes are very unlikely to be offered and you don’t want them displayed, change status to cancelled.

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New Class Timetable Site…

Tightly integrated with 2006 Online Handbook as Course record in the Online Handbook will link directly to the Class details page for the relevant course and vice versa.

Result is data is more ‘in your face’ e.g. class notes.

Currently (Oct. 2005) only data for Summer session is published. Session One and Two data published from 11 November.

If class data not published yet, the Handbook will link to:

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Key Dates

12 October - NSS Class Schedule roll forward.

Classes scheduled in Semester 1 and 2 2005 rolled forward to corresponding session for 2006 where Schedule Term roll is ‘On’ in the Course Catalogue. Status of rolled classes is adjusted according to the following rules:

If a class had zero enrolments in 2005, the 2006 status is Tentative.

If the status in 2005 was Active or Stop Further Enrolment, the 2006 status is Active.

If the 2005 status was Tentative, the 2006 status is Tentative.

Tentative classes retain all their other attributes, are not available for students to enrol in, but can be easily activated if required. If there is no intention to run them, their status should be updated to cancelled.

31 October – Summer Session enrolments commence

11 November – Publication of Session 1 & 2 Class Scheduling data on www.timetable.unsw.edu.au

12 December (tbc) – Session 1 and 2 2006 enrolments commence

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Class Scheduling – Access and Security

Access to update classes for particular courses in myUNSW is available if the user has either:

Class scheduling access in Citrix. Restrictions apply according to what academic unit you are identified as belonging to (i.e. as in Citrix, you can only view or update records for your own School).

or

Primary Instructor, Secondary Instructor, Administrator or Teaching Assistant on Staff Role in Meeting Details (Tutor/facilitators cannot update class records) or as Administrator in Class Details

This security model allows us to better support the variety of staffing models in faculties.

In some units class monitoring/updates are performed by administrative staff for all classes; in others academic staff administer classes for their own courses.

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Class Scheduling – Access and Security

Citrix Access

Schedule of Classes changed to read-only for period of adjustment to the new service. This access will be removed altogether at some point.

Class schedulers in faculties / schools will retain update access through Citrix to

Class Associations (to adjust Graded Component or remove an activity from a group)

Class Sections (to maintain Auto Enrol links in the rare cases where these are still necessary)

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Accessing the Class Maintenance service

Log into myUNSW with s[StaffID] + Unipass

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Academic Admin access

You must have a myUNSW role assigned in order to access the Academic Admin tab. There are currently three myUNSW roles:

Advisor: provides access to Academic statements, Class Schedule (view student’s timetable), Course/grade history (past enrolments and grades by term), Enrolment summary, Holds/To Do

Service Centre: provides access to students’ Current address, current email/phone, enrolment summary, Holds/To Do

Instructor: for academic staff. Provides access to personal teaching schedule as well as course/class rosters for classes they teach (if recorded as instructor against relevant classes in Schedule of Classes)

All staff who currently have Class Scheduling access in Citrix should have at least one myUNSW role assigned.

We would encourage Academic staff to proactively apply for Instructor access (not assigned automatically). We can advise you as to which of your Academic staff already have this access if necessary.

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Worth noting…

Introduction of new terminology e.g. ‘Activity’ replaces ‘Component’, and ‘Activity Group’ replaces ‘Class Association’ – full Glossary available in Online help.

Additional system validations to help prevent invalid configuration data

eg Components must be added to the course catalogue, not just class associations. These must be effective dated <= current date to be accessible in class maintenance record.

We will do some analysis and clean up in this area.

Auto enrol is now redundant except for rare cases (e.g. 4 components).

We will do some analysis and clean up in this area.

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Worth noting …

Activity Groups (formerly known as Class Associations – a grouping of classes that represent complementary activities).

An improved process has been introduced for these.

They should generally only be used where course is offered in multiple modes e.g. choice of Distance or In person.

Enrolment requirements continue to be maintained through Citrix.

Users can no longer delete a class – change status to Cancelled.

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Tips for new players ...

Be conservative initially when setting capacities. Required Room Capacity is an appropriate field to store your ultimate maximum capacity.

Make use of Reserve Capacities where appropriate - part or whole of class enrolment quota can be reserved for students meeting enrolment requirements. Places can be freed up at a later stage if not taken.

Reserve capacities use enrolment requirement groups e.g. by faculty, program/s, plan , stage. Some common pre-defined codes are:

20PPPP - Primary program is PPPP

004FF0 - Primary program's faculty is FF (each faculty has a base code assigned)

006NNN - Has completed NNN units (multiple of 6 to 144, then 12 to 192)

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Tips for new players ...

Class Notes are a useful way of conveying additional information to students e.g. field trips; tutorials commence in week 2; places in this class reserved for particular cohort etc.

Structures must be stable prior to the commencement of an enrolment period for a session

The most comprehensive NSS report to use to review class details is at (CITRIX):

Manage Student Records > Establish Courses > Report > Class Schedule with Enrolments.

The Class Utilisation Report (myUNSW) is also useful for tracking enrolments and demand.

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Send us your BUGS ...

Please report any bugs or issues with the new service.

See Contacts

Please provide examples. Screen shots showing exact scenario and error messages help facilitate follow up of issues.

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What the student sees when enrolling ...

Multiple Activity Groups (formerly Class Associations)

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What the student sees when enrolling ...

Single Activity group. Choice of Tutorial/Laboratory. Lecture pre-selected (no choice)

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Contacts

For further information and enquiries:

Scheduling and Academic Requirements Unit,Student Systems and Business Solutions

Nicola Plume

n.plume@unsw.edu.au ext. 58056

Lester Mata

lesterm@unsw.edu.au ext. 58040

Sarah Thomson, Head

s.thomson@unsw.edu.au ext. 58757

FASS and FCE will have a faculty staff member as first point of contact.

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Safari time…

Jump out of the UTE and into the JEEP..

Lets go on a Class Scheduling SAFARI….

Beep Beep.