Ease The Workload: Automatically Generate Student Schedules

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When it comes time to Enroll Students in their Classes – did you know you can let the system do most of the work for you?  The option to Generate Student Schedules is designed to help ease the workload of getting Students in the right classes.  A few things to remember before scheduling students:


> Students must have Student Requests.  Requests are used by the system to make sure Students are Enrolled in Classes they desire using the correct Priorities.


> You must already have Classes created.  These can either be created automatically using Create Classes or Manually Created


> Ensure a backup copy of the database has been made prior to Enrolling Students.  For Hosted Customers, this happens automatically every 15 minutes.


NOTE: To help speed up the Scheduling Process, please review the following article: How to set Business Rules to Increase Scheduling Efficiency in the Education Edge.  The following screenshot shows the Business Rules for Scheduling in Configuration> Business Rules.  The circled area is important in that it defines which Students will be included in Scheduling.  The arrow points to an important rule when Enrolling Students, regarding whether to reflect changes in one Term to another Term.  See the above article for more information.


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Next let’s review the parameter used when Generating Student Schedules:


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The most important things to ensure are:


> On the General tab, be sure to check the boxes to Save the Scheduling Scenario (Before and After).  This ensures that if you make a mistake, the changes can be undone without restoring.


> On the General 2 tab, note that you can Clear the Current Enrollment (if you’re running it to correct previous Scheduling), Reschedule (same reason), Fill Free Time (see this article for details), Balance Classes based on Gender, Consider Alternate Requests, and enable the system to create Partial Schedules if it can’t fully complete for a Student.


Lastly, let’s take a look at the Advanced tab:


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The section circled will save tons of time and headaches when scheduling, provided you’re okay with the restrictions you’re telling it to override.  As an example, one of the options is to override the Class Size.  Let’s say you’re set the Class Size at about 30, and there are two Classes for a Course.  If 80 Students request the Class, the system will return an exception when Scheduling for 20 of them saying the Class is full.  The setting above allows you override that and let it schedule as needed.  Keep in mind that this example could lead to slightly unbalanced classes.


Other sections include the Criteria to use when Scheduling, Priorities to use, and a part on Course Rules.  In general the system will use the Rules on the Course Records to Schedule as they’re set up, but this section again allows you to bypass exceptions and override those Rules.


The most important thing to remember regarding this Automatic Scheduling Process is that it’s not designed to completely eliminate fine tuning the Schedules manually.  There will be times and situations where you will need to Edit Student Schedules Manually, even after running the automatic process.  This is completely normal!


Some great additional resources:


Knowledgebase Article: How to automatically schedule students in classes in EE


Scheduling Guide

News Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog 07/29/2015 6:30am EDT

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