Filling Free Periods [blocks] with a course

John Ronan

I've had a heck of a time filling all of our students' free periods with a specific course [e.g. “study hall” or “lunch”] and I can't believe there isn't a better way.

First of all, I'm amazed that there isn't a simple way to fill free periods with a course. In EE, it was a matter of clicking a checkbox and entering a course code. If you want to vote for a [so far] neglected idea on this, please click here.

For now, here's what I had to do to fill free periods with a course. Please tell me if I have overthought this and am missing an easier way.

• Run the Free Students - By Meeting Time report to learn the free periods so I could build an import csv file. I got about 21,000 results and they were formatted like this:
  9/1/2022 8:30-9:30
  Smith, John
  Jones, Jane
  9/2/2022 10:30-11:30
  Doe, Danielle
  …
• Do some significant Excel work to flesh out complete records that I could use on import. A better starting point would have been something like this:
  Three rows [of two columns each]:
  Period Student
  9/1/2022 8:30-9:30 Smith, John
  9/1/2022 8:30-9:30 Jones, Jane
  9/2/2022 10:30-11:30 Doe, Danielle
  note: I created this idea that calls for a more “data-centered”, useful Free Students report. [your vote appreciated ?]
• Use these records to look up user ids, etc to create an import file for enrollment in the filler course.
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