Carleton Now

Posted Apr. 7/08

By Martha Attridge Bufton

To meet its ongoing commitment to producing an annual academic timetable that works for both students and faculty, the Carleton University Timetabling Committee recently asked teaching staff to comment on the new coordinated scheduling system.

According to the professors, lecturers and instructors who completed the standing committee’s web-based survey in late 2007, the process needs improvement in two key areas: accommodation of childcare responsibilities and communication.

Specifically, faculty indicated that although existing policies and procedures allowed teaching staff to ask for changes in their assigned schedules to accommodate their childcare responsibilities, in practice they found it difficult to get such requests approved. Plus, although faculty initially thought they understood how the new system worked, as the year went on they realized that they did not.

With a response rate of 40 per cent, timetabling committee co-chair Katherine Graham, dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs, knows the results are significant.

“The data confirms, as we suspected, that the system does not meet everyone’s professional and personal needs,” she says. “However, with so many teaching staff participating in the survey, we now have clear direction as to where we must make changes.”

The university introduced the coordinated process at the beginning of the 2007-08 academic year. Historically, timetables were produced in part by hand while classrooms were assigned via computer. This hybrid process was often inefficient. Classrooms and labs were underutilized, students experienced scheduling difficulties and faculty could find themselves working in rooms that didn’t meet their teaching needs.

Under the new system, academic units fill teaching blocks and submit their requests to scheduling and exam services, which then use a computer program to coordinate this information with both undergraduate and graduate student course offerings and available space.

This process is designed primarily to ensure that students experience minimal conflicts among required courses and, where possible, have access to a wider range of elective courses. However, the system is also intended to effectively match “the right room with the right course” and set timetables for faculty members that include reasonable teaching blocks (e.g., no block of teaching exceeds three hours).

Co-chair Suzanne Blanchard, the associate vice-president (student support services), reports that the committee has already amended policies and procedures, based on the most recent faculty feedback.

Teaching staff may request special timetabling arrangements to deal with reported circumstances that would create considerable difficulties if not accommodated. These circumstances include, but are not limited to, specific personal issues and family obligations of a serious nature. In addition, faculty members now have the option of declaring a preference for either morning or afternoon teaching times.

The committee has also taken steps to communicate more effectively with individual professors, lecturers and instructors. Initially, the group’s primary strategy was to leverage the existing communication networks because, “we wanted each unit to manage information according to its needs,” explains Blanchard. She and Graham worked with deans, chairs and directors who, in turn, communicated with their faculty members.

“However, we obviously need new strategies for explaining what we’re doing and why if the process is still unclear to individuals,” observes Blanchard. As a first step, she and Graham have emailed all faculty members directly to explain the policies and procedures by which an individual can state his/her preferred teaching times.

In addition to the issues identified in the faculty survey, the committee has also determined that the new process has improved the use of classroom space. There are now more opportunities for faculty to change rooms during “prime time”—11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday—if the assigned space is unsuitable.

The group will continue to address other on-going concerns such as scheduling exams and booking special events (e.g., conferences, public lectures, and ceremonies) and Graham is hopeful that the coming year will be much easier for everyone.

“We are anticipating that it will take three years to ensure that the process is working as smoothly as possible and not causing undue hardship for students, faculty and academic timetablers,” she states. “It is a work in progress.”

Survey results are available to readers at carleton.ca/registrar/admin/timetable/committee.htm.

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Carleton Now asked four professors and one student to comment on coordinated timetabling.

CUASA’s recent survey of our members indicates significant dissatisfaction with coordinated timetabling. Of particular concern are the inability to build adequate time for research into our schedules and the conviction that quality of teaching is undermined when instructors teach courses without breaks between classes. We realize that the timetabling exercise is a work in progress and that the committee is already addressing some of the concerns voiced by the academic staff. However, we feel further changes need to be made and we hope this can be done this year. Associate Professor Susanne Klausen (history), CUASA president Centralized timetabling has had more negative impact on my work satisfaction and morale than any other experience in my employment at Carleton. The impersonal approach that replaced departmental-level people with intrusive forms and an algorithm for apparent administrative efficiency is insulting and unresponsive to the individual. In the end, this system actually diminishes Carleton’s most important learning resource, our faculty.

Associate Professor Tim Pychyl (psychology)

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Spreading teaching out across the whole working day increases student choice and moves classroom usage from 59 per cent to a more acceptable figure. For these reasons, centralized scheduling is desirable. The first year, however, the computer program was too rigid, especially for couples with children. There was talk about improving it but I don’t know if that has happened.

Chancellor’s Professor Andrew Brook (director, institute of cognitive science)

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The committee has always been concerned about providing the highest quality of academic experience for students. However, it is not surprising that the needs of some faculty members have not been met because different programs have different timetabling needs. Some programs, like those in science and engineering,have strict course/lab requirements given their inherent structured nature whereas students in other programs have more opportunities to shape their own schedules—these differences must have an impact on faculty.

Karen Williams (fourth-year criminology student, timetabling committee member)

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There’s certainly room for improvement, but in general [the process] worked fairly well for us. It’s safe to say that the biggest concern I heard expressed by our students was about long days—for some courses, there were big time gaps between lectures and labs scheduled on the same day.

Professor John Blenkinsop, (chair, earth sciences)

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Carleton University Timetabling Committee

Co-chairs:

Katherine Graham, Dean, Faculty of Public Affairs
Suzanne Blanchard, Associate Vice-President (Student Support Services)

Administrative support:

Jan Patterson

Faculty representatives:

Nick Rowe, Faculty of Public Affairs
Shibu Pal, Sprott School of Business
James Deaville, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Donald Russell, Faculty of Engineering and Design
Edward Lai, Faculty of Science

Other representatives: