Registrar's Office: Scheduling 101 - Simplify Scheduling By Defining Relationships Between Courses

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Welcome back to the Summer Scheduling Series. So far, we've discussed how the scheduling process really starts in Configuration and how to globally edit course limits on the Master Schedule screen. Now, let's take a look at the Rules tab on course records.

The Rules tab is important for both automated and manual scheduling.  Why?  The Rules tab is where you tell the program how courses relate to each other. To do this, you can assign scheduling rules and define prerequisites.

Assigning Scheduling Rules
A scheduling rule defines a relationship between courses in the master schedule and/or student schedules. For example, you can define a rule for courses that must be taken during the same term  (aka corequisites), such as Biology and Biology Lab.

Rules tab

If you select the Use rule when enrolling students checkbox on the scheduling rule in Configuration (see below), the rule streamlines course request assignment. When you enter a student request for one of the corequisites in Scheduling, the program asks  if you want to add a request for the other corequisite.

Scheduling Rule for Corequisites

You can define as many scheduling rules as you need to match your scheduling process. For example:

  • You can identify courses that need to be paired across terms, such as Health and Phys Ed.

  • You can link together core courses so each student is enrolled in the corresponding class section (such as 01, 02, or 03, etc.) of each course.

Defining Prerequisites
In addition to adding scheduling rules on the Rules tab, you can list course prerequisites. For example, you can require students to take Spanish I before they take Spanish II. Of course, you can manually override a prerequisite if necessary, such as when a student tests out of Spanish I.

Multi-Course Prerequisite

Note: You can define an OR formula or an AND formula for prerequisites. In the example above, I am telling the program that students must either have an  enrollment for SPAN I (a Standard course offered at my school) OR a grade of B or higher in Spanish 1, which is a Transfer course.

The reason I didn’t require a specific grade in the course offered at my school is that we schedule students for the upcoming year before the current year has ended, so final grades aren’t entered yet.

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Turn to Knowledgebase for More Information



  • How to create scheduling rules and add them to course records: BB145586.
  • How to define prerequisites: BB220568.

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News Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog 06/26/2013 5:25pm EDT

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