Case Study #1: Academic Scheduling

ISSUE:

In this situation, the college (with several remote campuses) was experiencing difficulty in managing the increased number of online courses. Many of the new remote learning course sections, which were traditionally campus-based, had limited enrollment, below what was generally considered economically viable to run. The Division Deans had administrative responsibility over all disciplines in their divisions, complicated by the fact that each remote campus offered courses in their areas. Class sections were entered at each campus independently by local assistant Deans. The Division Deans wanted improved visibility during the academic scheduling process so that they could balance the needs of the division with the offerings on each campus, while ensuring that their course offerings were accessible to students no matter which campus was their home location.

SOLUTION:

A college-wide scheduling system was needed that could be tied directly into the ERP data (where class sections were entered), but would be flexible enough to provide rapid updates on class sections entered and the ability to custom pivot the data in multiple views to see the overall picture of scheduled classes by division and campus. Excel was chosen as an option, not to schedule sections themselves, but to be employed as a data visualization tool.

Using an Excel workbook to assist in course semester scheduling can be accomplished several ways. Course sections can be entered into a shared spreadsheet, analyzed for alignment with Academic Affairs guidelines and then final versions can be input into the college’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) course scheduling software (for example, Ellucian Colleague or Banner). Alternatively, course sections can be entered directly into the ERP scheduling software before going live, and the results exported into Excel for analysis and approval. Any changes would then be made directly in the ERP system. Either way, a customized Excel workbook can be designed and programmed to provide a valuable overview with multiple pivot views of a college’s course offerings to supplement the standard (and often less helpful) reporting options offered through the ERP software.

The gray buttons in this workbook perform selected tasks. The “Pull College-Wide Informer Data” button accesses the ERP software and imports the current database of course offerings. The “Run Two-Year Alignment Check” button compares the listed offerings to the college-approved perennial schedule (courses always offered in a repeatable fashion) to ensure that the provided class sections meet this requirement. The “Compare Current Schedule to Previous Schedule” button identifies which course sections have changed in the ERP since the last run of this workbook – then the appropriate administrators only need to focus on the changes made if all other sections have been previously approved.

As with all Excel spreadsheets, the results (literally hundreds of entries) can be filtered as desired to look at certain disciplines, teaching modalities, campuses, etc. If desired, separate worksheets can be automatically created from this source worksheet to provide a list of only those course sections residing in each academic division for Dean review.