I am going to bring this up again since I did not get a response the first time. I am thinking I am not the only one. (Then again, maybe I am.)
It would really help us to have a more robust class scheduling/scheduler options as we add classes to terms. Right now, the scheduling feature seems best for regular weekly classes, but we have many classes that meet over multiple weekends, irregular dates and times, etc. Could the scheduler be updated to handle these varying course formats?
No you are not the only one. Our College, too has meeting times that differ somewhat from the dates of a term. Our semester system has two 6 week terms and several 1-week module course options available. This means that a class will have regular scheduled meetings for only a portion of the academic term and the remainder of the term is open for students to complete the assignments etc.
Here is another post that is very similar to the subject matter: https://support.populiweb.com/entries/251318-multiple-venue-course-scheduling-enhancement
We definitely need something that will allow us to have much more flexible schedules (such as specifying a date range -or ranges- for meeting times).
Just to make sure you know, you can edit a course instance's meeting times from the instance's Calendar tab to make the schedule exactly how you want it.
This might be o.k. for one or two changes, but would be a largely cumbersome method for our situation.
Our semester system is divided into two six week terms that each begin with 1-week module classes that only meet one that one week. It would mean that each and every course would need to be adjusted. Below is a link to our timetable.
https://horizon.celect.org/uploads/files/0027/9958/2012-13_timetable_tentative.pdf
We just went through our first online populi registration and it was chaotic as the course conflict were not detected and so students weren't able to register themselves.
As the Registrar I had a very long line of students needing to see me for the simple override to enrolment. As two courses in one semester are offered in the same time slot but with different start and end meeting dates.
Thanks, Sherrie
@Sherrie - Not sure if it would work for you, but maybe you could not enter meeting times for those courses and just add the classes manually in the course instance calendar? You could give the instances unique names so you could tell them apart in registration, but you wouldn't have scheduling conflicts to deal with.
That's just the problem. It would mean that ALL of our courses would need be manually added. If the option for meetings times included a start and end date that could be indicated separate from the the start and end date of the entire term then we could benefit from the scheduling being done in one place and not have to go an manually add them to another calendar location.
Our students will meet for either one week or over the duration of 6-weeks but they will still be granted the time within that term to complete that course work.
This tends to be cumbersome for us as well. We have hybrid courses that meet online most of the semester, but meet on campus one full week. I want to make note of the campus meeting dates but have to make 6 entries for each course.
We also have weekend courses that meet once a month, but not necessarily evenly spaced such as every 2 or every 4 weeks. Sometimes there are three weeks between, sometimes only two.
YES, YES, YES, Same as Dee McOwen!!!
We have a course that meets online for half of the classes, alternating weeks.
When we try to edit the classes in the Calendar it only gives us the option of "Save this and for the future".
It doesn't give us the option of saving just one course meeting at a time.
Please advise.
We also have class times/meetings that are condensed into one week.
Yes, I agree and our schools would benefit greatly from this.
Joseph Schooland replied to my most recent request, again, about enhancing the meeting scheduling to make it more flexible. It is clear from these additional comments that there is a demand for this option. Graduate schools and likely under-grad schools are needing to provide classes in different formats (which Populi allows) and meeting schedules (which Populi does not provide the flexibility to prevent massive manual data entry just for scheduling). Because of Jospeh's response (We don't have more flexible scheduling built into our short list so I don't know when (or even if) we'll be able to do that.), I recently contacted support to see if it is possible to add a free text "notes" field within the scheduling section which would allow us to identify actual meeting times in a space that is evident for that purpose. Support's response to use the description field does not work well because we include our course descriptions and the information would be lost in that section.
Hopefully the free-text field could be added to the meeting times section as a stop gap until such time as Populi recognizes that the meeting scheduling time is just not meeting our needs well and works to move this up on the "to-implement SOON short-list".
You know we really like the software, but this is one area that is deficient enough for at least some of us to weigh in on the importance of this topic. We're a small school, I can only imagine the difficulties for schools larger than we are.
Respectfully submitted,
Dee
What would be IDEAL for us is to be able to import our Google Calendar that we use for course scheduling. As long as the course name in the calendar matches the course instance in Populi it seems like that would be the best way to capture all the course times no matter how irregular.
Long-term, ideally add the ability to indicate the actual dates and times individually, where these are automatically entered into the calendar.
Short-term, perhaps a checkbox, "Course meets irregularly," with the option to enter a note indicating the meeting dates and times. The note would appear with the course on the registration page.
Mark - this is a brilliant set of ideas. We've been dying for a better solution for class dates and times. Long-term, I know developing new functionality for the class calendar system isn't one of Populi's top priorities. But, the short-term idea may get some traction. I like your idea of the checkbox and then the ability to enter some kind of free-form text for our administrators to at least communicate the dates. Right now, for some of our courses we have to enter date information into another unrelated field just so it can be available via the API, and even then, it's not available on the course registration page.
Populi devs - what do you say? Could Mark's short term idea be something that would be relatively easy to implement?
Since COVID we have many asynchronous online courses, and some courses that meet every first Monday for instance. (Every first Monday is not the same as "every 4 weeks" which is the only option in meeting times currently instead of every week).
A check box in Meeting Times for "Asynchronous Online/ No Set Meeting Times" would be very helpful.
An option for "every xxx XXXX" (ie every 1st Monday, or every 4th Friday) as is on all other calendars (Google, Outlook, TeamSnap, Shutterfly, etc) would also be ideal.
