Copyright © 2006, Infinite Campus, Inc. All rights reserved. Middle School Scheduling Tips and Tricks

Copyright © 2006, Infinite Campus, Inc. All rights reserved.

Middle School Scheduling

Tips and Tricks


Agenda

Review the scheduling process in Campus, discovering (and sharing) tips and tricks through the process.

1. Calendar Setup

2. Course Setup

3. Request Entry

4. Request Reporting

5. Master Schedule Creation

6. Loading

7. Trial management


The Scheduling Process/Workflow

Sys Adminroles

1. Calendar Roll/Creation

2. Enrollment Roll Forward

School staff responsibilities

3. Course maintenance (catalog?)

4. Request entry

5. Request analysis

6. Master Schedule Building

7. Loading requests into different trials

8. Making best trial active

9. Clean-up


Calendar Creation

Before rolling over existing calendar structure, consider:

Does current calendar meet the needs of the school?

1. Does it accurately reflect when grades are to be reported?

2. Does it match to when students change courses?

Are there major changes coming to our school in terms of structure/organization?


Term Schedules

Divisions of the year should fit: the patterns desired by the school for grading the point in time when students change

courses they are attending. Terms schedule should fit the needs of the

school for grading, not make the school fit an arbitrary term setup.


1. 6-week terms Create six terms in the calendar (the “hexter”) Longer courses (trimesters, semesters) can be built as

multiple hexters.

Sem1 Sem 2

H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6

Tri 1 Tri 2 Tri 3


2. 12 terms

Campus will support 12 terms to accommodate mixed length courses.

Terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

6 wk. H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6

QTR Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Tri T1 T2 T3

Sem S1 S2


Period Setup

Divisions of day that determine:Units available during the student dayTime to subtract from day duration/

instructional minutes to determine whole day absence for a student (and hence ADA)

Times do not need to match bell schedule exactly, but be set for the correct length of instructional time in each period.


Two Day Rotations (A/B, Red-White, etc)

Create two period structures Period names and sequence should match.


Odd/Even/All Day Rotations Create three period structures Sequence for the periods that are the same (1st period)

should then be the same also.


Even/Odd/All Period Setup


1.2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

Course Tab Options1. Course Number must be unique in a

school.2. Active must be checked if the course is

needed for scheduling and registration3. Department selection will allow you to

schedule by department in the wizard and expand and collapse there for easier navigation.

4. Terms, Schedules, Periods for drag and drop section creation.

5. Scheduling Priority.6. Max students has to be set for loading

purposes7. Type: Elective or Required is used for

reporting purposes only. Will not change load order

8. Allow requests will permit students to request the course when they are registering online.

9. Students will see the description when they are logging on and registering online.


Priority Priority will tell the Wizard when to load this course in the

full load. Done to fulfill requests that the student’s schedule needs

to be built around. Analogous to boarding an airplane:

People traveling with small children (1st) First class (2nd) Elite/Frequent Flier program (3rd) General Boarding

The scheduling staff person may do manual priority setting by loading particular courses first, then locking the rosters for that course. Priority values are not needed in that situation.


Splitting Courses

Math A Elective 1

Elective 2 Math B

Splitting year-long courses into smaller units allows the wizard greater flexibility in scheduling in courses that are shorter length.

If electives are semester long courses and the student had requested Math and Elective 1, it is possible that they would not have gotten into Elective 1 if Math had been a year long course.

Rules can be used to establish how the requests for Math A and Math B are fulfilled in relation to each other.

Composite grading can be done only within a course. A grade from Math A cannot be composited with a grade from Math B.


Course Rules

Rules set up relationships between how requests will be loaded into the schedule by the Schedule Wizard. NOT PREREQUISITES Only apply to students who requested both classes in

the related pair. Set the minimum number of rules you need.

Too many rules make the Wizard work longer and “spin” harder and lower your requests satisfied percentage.


Rules: Before/After or Precedes/Follows?

Term placement Before/after allows a term gap. Precedes is an immediate

before. In a 4x4 block schedule,

“before” will allow a gap between the courses for a student.

In this example, a student must have 1546 Intro to Foods in a term previous to the term s/he is scheduled into 1547 Culinary Arts.


Rules: Before/After OR consecutive?

Consecutive will place the two courses together in whatever order it can. If Speech and English 10 are defined as

consecutive, either course could come first for a student.


Rules: Linking Courses together Same Teacher

If I had Mrs. Nelson for English 10, I will have her for Speech/Debate. Same Section (number)

If I was in section 3 of English 10, I will be in section 3 of Speech/Debate.

Same Period If I was in English 10 first hour in term 1, I will be in Speech/Debate first

hour of another term. These rules should only be set if there could be other

outcomes than what you desire for the student. (i.e. if Mrs. Nelson is the only teacher of Speech/Debate and English 10, a rule is not necessary)


Rules: Setting the Courses in Time

Same (term) A science lecture and a

science lab should be taken the same term.

Not Same (term) Due the homework load,

AP US History should not be the same time as AP English (Literature).

A student should not take more than 1 FACS or PhyEd course at a time.


Rules: The Skinny on the Skinny

Skinny--courses that are allowed to be scheduled into the same slot(s) of time on a student schedule.

Example: art/choirBoth teachers have access to attendance and

can decide what days or how students will fit into both classes.


Skinnys and Attendance

Campus attendance is period-based. In a skinny scenario, either teacher is

marking the student absent for the PERIOD.


Rule 12 and Rule 13.

Bind– if I don’t get one course, I don’t get the other.

Combined– 1 teacher teaching two sections at the same time. Will tell the Wizard to ignore the potential scheduling

conflicts that it would see for the teacher and the room.

Example: Mr. Pepper teaches Advanced Biology and Anatomy at the same time in room 715.


Common Middle School Rule Scenarios

Same Section- often used to have students travel as a group through the exploratory wheel

Same Teacher- linked sections of English/Reading

Skinny for music courses or for a 6-segment exploratory wheel built on a 4 term calendar.


Other Rules used?


Teams in Campus

School & Calendar specific

Created and maintained in Scheduling> Scheduling Group


Setting the Schedule for Teams

Sections are then assigned to a team. This is done for all courses that are “taught on-team”

Once a student is associated with a team, the wizard will roster the student into that team’s sections in other courses when a full load is done.


“Making the Team”

Methods of putting a student onto a team: Manual Team Selection

Once teams are created, a dropdown menu will be available in the walk-in scheduler in the web interface. Selecting a team for will govern which section a student is placed into.

Pure Random- first course that I get into determines which team I am a part of for all other courses.

1. Run a full load with sections assigned to teams.2. Wizard will seek overall numeric & gender balance as much as

possible. “Guided Random”- one course is loaded and reviewed and

used as the basis for team membership.1. Load the course (manually using roster builder in the Wizard OR

Load Course)2. Review rosters for issues/conflicts.3. OPTIONAL: lock rosters for that course4. Proceed with full load.


Request Entry

Student requests can be entered in three methods.

1. Mass Request Wizard

2. Student Portal (registration option)

3. Walk-in scheduler

Requests entered in any way will go into the same “bucket” for reporting and loading.


Types of Requests Three types of requests in Campus.

Think of these as filling up a student’s bucket of requests: Required- school staff entered requests Elective– student entered via the Portal Alternate– spillover… extra courses.

Required and electives will be loaded by the Wizard.

Alternates are used during manual cleanup on the Walk-in scheduler

Request type is used in determining how a course request was entered.


Mass Request Creation: Request Wizard

Requests may be created for all students in a grade level, for an adhoc filter (dynamic or static query), or based on a roster in a prior year.

These will then be added to an individual student’s request list.May be changed in the walk-in schedulerCANNOT be changed by the student in the

Portal.


Student Portal

Student searches by course name or number, will be able to see the description and then choose request course or make alternates.


Scheduling>Reports>Request Reports

Report Description Potential Use

Request Batch

One page per student of the requests in Campus.

Handing out to students to verify their request entry in the Portal.

Request Conflicts

Will display the other requests made by students who have selected the course you selected.

Avoiding placing "landmines' in the schedule (scheduling the 1 section of AP English opposite Choir)

Request Counts

Students who have not requested enough courses for a full instructional schedule

Finding students who need to complete the registration process

Request Detail

Students who have requested a particular course.

Checking appropriate placement for math.

Requests Satisfied

Number of requests met out of total number of requests for a course.

Determining number of sections to run, student max, etc.


Ad-Hoc: Course Request Information

Data available in the request reports is also available here, plus: Required (school staff

entered), elective (student entered via the portal), alternate (students next best option) requests.

Students who are Special Education on an IEP who request the course.

Running an AdHoc filter for that school past years will show historical data for requests if such data is needed.


Section CreationSections of courses may be created in either the Web interface (section placement grid) or drag-and-drop in the Schedule Wizard (like a whiteboard with magnets)Using the terms-schedules-periods data on the course to determine the dimensions of the section on the grid.


The Schedule Wizard

Campus DBWeb Application

UsersUsers ScheduleWizard

Unlike the Campus application (accessed via a web browser), the Schedule Wizard downloads information from the database and then does all work and processing on the local machine. It then re-saves back to the Campus DB. This arrangement means the following rules MUST BE FOLLOWED TO AVOID ISSUES:

1. One computer per time running the Wizard for a school.2. Changes should be made in the Wizard or the application at one time, not

both!


Schedule Wizard-Organizing Trials

A trial is a version of the master schedule.

Schools and calendars

Copying a trial allows you to keep work you have already saved while you try some different options.

Making a trial active will allow you to look at modifications you made in the Schedule Wizard on the web interface.


Navigation

1. Window2. Menu bar3. Display options4. Right click options5. Hovering


Menu bar

Navigation

Selecting and saving

trials

Display options Loading,

unloading, and loading

preferences

Reports to view information WITHIN the

WIZARD


Schedule Wizard- View Options View conflicts (red)

Teacher Room Request (singletons!)

Missing data (green) Highlight (yellow)

Courses w/o enough seats Full sections Empty sections

View Options Multiple terms (orange) Hide all but singletons


Using the Request Conflicts to Place Singletons Request Conflicts can

be used to place singleton sections where there are the fewest student conflicts.


Right click options

Course Section

Department Term

Period


Hovering

Sections Course number and

name Section number Count Male/Female breakdown Teacher name Room number

Courses Number and name Requests satisfied Seats taken Sections placed/ needed Build section limit Rules for the course

Departments Requests Satisfied Seats taken

Terms Term Seats taken Sections placed

Periods Term and period Seats taken Sections placed


Loading

3. Manual Roster Builder to load students one by one

2. Auto Loader Config for loading sections automatically

1. Full, department, and course loading and unloading

Documents

Copyright © 2006, Infinite Campus, Inc. All rights reserved. Middle School Scheduling Tips and Tricks