Linking sections of courses

Mollie McDermott

When creating our schedule, it would be really handy if there was a way to link certain sections of different courses together.

For example, we have a Freshman Seminar class that meets one day per cycle, and it replaces one day of their Freshman religion class. So if a student is in Freshman Religion section 011.01 they should also be in Freshman Seminar section 914.01.

The blocks are all set up correctly, but when I run the scheduler, it puts students into the wrong single period course. Instead, it mixes it in with their Phys Ed and Health classes, which meet 2 days per week each.

Has anyone tried to do something similar to this? I tried to create a Rule to make them match, but the options I have don't make them match properly.

Jimmy Cudzilo

This sounds similar to what we call our “Wheel” courses in our Middle School. The Wheel courses are PE and Seminar (years ago it also included a technology course). These courses meet in rotation and the students in Section 1 of PE should be in Section 1 of Seminar, etc…

We currently DO NOT use the Schedule Maker tools to build those rosters or schedule the sections.

Here's our manual process:

• Section 1 of PE and Seminar are scheduled both to meet in Academic Block 1. Section 2 of both in Academic Block 2, and so on…
• Faculty are assigned to their sections manually. Department Chairs determine how to assign the teachers.
• Students are assigned to each section based on their advisory group (basically two advisories to each academic group section)--the details of the assignments are provided by our Middle School academic leadership team. This allows us to enroll the same set of students into the correct corresponding wheel courses (PE 1 = Seminar 1).
• We then remove the “extra” meetings from the Daily Schedule so that PE 1 and Seminar 1 don't both meet on the same day of the Academic Block 1 rotation. At the most basic, we see PE 1 the first time the block is scheduled then Seminar 1 the second time the block is scheduled.
• This allows for the student and teacher schedules to display the correct class and location on each day of the rotation within Blackbaud.

Mollie McDermott

That sounds like what I ended up doing. Thanks for the response!