“By creating we think, by living we learn” Patrick Geddes
Core teaching hours are Monday - Friday 0900-1800 (0900-1400 on Wednesdays). It is possible that teaching could be scheduled within any of these hours. However, you will have the opportunity to state any times when you cannot be available for teaching; once these availability constraints have been signed off by the relevant Dean, we will build these constraints into the initial draft of the timetable, and will ask for reconsideration if scheduling problems arise.
Not for 2010/11. We do not believe that current processes for student module selection take place in good enough time to inform timetable generation. We will be using student module selections from the last three academic sessions to create workable student pathways.
Staff timetables should be available, as in the course of creating a workable co-ordinated timetable we should be collecting staff allocation to all teaching duties. However, we are not timetabling on an individual student basis for 2010/11. This may be developed in future sessions once a co-ordinated timetable has been implemented successfully.
We can provide a default setting for their availability and then adjust this when they are assigned. Furthermore, we can assign a group of staff members to a group of teaching activities (eg the tutorial sessions for a large module) then use the timetable system to allocate those staff members to the individual activities according to their availability.
During the Web Data Collection process in March / April you will be asked to indicate an estimate of students attached to a module. We will ask you to monitor likely intake and let us know as soon as possible where large discrepancies may arise.
We will allocate those teaching activities to the specialist rooms as you require. The School-managed rooms in question should now be on the central timetable system after the information requests which CTS lodged with Schools in 2009/10. However, please let CTS know of any other rooms which you may use for teaching activities.
No. Schools will retain management control of the rooms which are currently at their disposal for teaching.
We will place teaching activities into them which require their specialist facilities. However, we will require Schools to update central systems with the ad hoc bookings that they make of these rooms, so that we always have a live, up-to-date record of bookings in all University teaching rooms. If School-managed rooms have generic rather than specialist facilities we may look to use them for other Schools at times when pooled spaces are not available. However we will seek the permission of the relevant School before proceeding.
We recognise that this is quite possible, eg because of a staff member's part-time contract or visiting lecturer availability. Let us know what those constraints are and we will build them into the co-ordinated timetable.
Yes, that is our intention as we want to have a complete picture of the University's teaching and as much flexibility as possible in its scheduling. It is recognised that specific constraints may apply to postgraduate teaching and we will also ask you to detail these in the information gathering exercise for 2010/11.
The CTS will be collecting a range of information.
(a) from SITS
- programmes of study for each level of each degree programme. These will be derived by importing pathways
(the unique combinations of modules selected by students enrolled in each programme) over the current and
previous two academic sessions. These will form the available pathways for the 2010/11 session. We will use the
largest intake number across the three previous academic sessions as an estimate of intake for each pathway
for 2010/11;
(b) from Schools
- the teaching activities for each module;
- the staff involved in the teaching of each activity, and the availability of those staff;
- confirmation of the School-managed spaces which must be used for teaching in specialist subjects.
This information will be gathered by using a Web Data Collection tool which is to be developed in February
2009.
(c) from the Space Management Group
- confirmation of the centrally-managed rooms which will be available for teaching.
Much depends on the availability of centrally-managed rooms, which is not yet certain (the loss of Microcentre 1.04, 1.05 and 1.09, Scrymgeour 1.03 and 1.08, and Tower T1, T3 and T4 at the end of the 2009/10 session seems definite and others may follow). In general terms rooms will be allocated according to the best fit of group size and room capacity first; however zonal allocations will be made wherever possible. A small number of rooms will continue to be set aside for University non-teaching activities (such as staff / student development courses, University and School committee meetings etc).
We will include a list of the modules we believe to be running in 2010/11 in the Web Data Collection tool and ask you to inform us separately of any new ones as soon as you know about them.
An overview of student activities will be taken when we transfer historical pathways information from SITS into the timetabling software.
We will need to be informed of these activities so that we can block out the days / times involved and schedule the related UoD-based activities appropriately.
We intend to collect this information via the Web Data Collection tool. It is probably in lecturers’ interests to provide the required detail; a default setting for availability will be applied in the absence of specific information. The centralised timetabling project has the full support of the University's senior management; however, if you have any concerns, please e-mail the Project Team.
We intend to publish a production schedule containing these details, and intended dates of timetable publications, in early February 2010. We will also post regular e-mails to relevant parties and messages and reminders on these web pages.
We will endeavour to collect information about these allocation rules from you before creating the timetable.
How can I ask other questions?Please send an e-mail to the Project Team.
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