What Courses? — When Offered? — Where Taught? — Who Teaches?
When determining the times and days of your courses, you will need to check with your instructors for their preferences, ensure that course times do not conflict, and check for compliance with campus policy.
Use the check list below to help you with this process.
Please note that there are no standard class time/days for summer session.
Collect time/day preferences from instructors
Review time/day requests for conflicts
Check for compliance with campus policy
Check for appropriate number of instructional minutes per credit/type of instruction
Check for overlapping or conflicting times if using department controlled space
Collect time/day preferences from instructors
Use a form to collect time and day preferences from instructors. Some departments will pre-determine times/days for certain courses such as service courses. If information is not returned from an instructor, assume same time as previous like semester.
- Instructor preference form (MSWord)
Please encourage your instructors to use standard class meeting times for their course offerings. This helps to ensure that students have access to the classes they need (i.e., courses are not overlapping), as well as efficient utilization of classroom space.
Determine the appropriate session in which the course will meet. For fall and spring terms, courses that meet all semester will be in the “A1” session. Use the session code list for a given semester to determine sessions for courses meeting for less than the full semester, and for all summer sessions courses.
Review time/day requests for conflicts
Review time/day requests to check for time conflicts among courses that students are required to take at various points in progress toward graduation.
- Query Library – Timetable Audit: Class Overlaps
Check for compliance with campus policy
Ensure that your course times comply with campus classroom scheduling policies, including hour spreading and standard class hours, and that your 75-minute undergraduate lecture sections are offered at times within policy limitations (or that an exception has been granted).
Classroom Scheduling Policies: These policies provide guidelines for the use of standard class hours, and distribution of class hours, day patterns, and enrollments. They govern the use of university spaces classified by Space Management as classrooms and apply to General Assignment Classrooms, scheduled by the Curricular Services section of the Office of the Registrar, as well as department scheduled classrooms.
Curricular Services provides reports of your department’s hours spreading and classes scheduled at non-standard hours with the curricular build to assist you in monitoring your compliance with policy. Curricular Services asks that you review these reports and make any adjustments to your class hours as necessary to adhere to standard hours and hour spreading.
75 minute Undergraduate Lecture Periods Policies: Seventy-five minute undergraduate lecture sections that overlap with the peak-use 50-minute periods on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday add to scheduling conflicts for students and faculty and make it more difficult for academic units to make effective use of limited classroom space. Therefore, scheduling 75-minute undergraduate lecture sections on M, W, and/or F during the peak-use, mid-day time periods is permitted only by dean’s recommendation and provost’s approval. Please review the policy statement for further information and guidelines for seeking approval, if necessary.
Please communicate with your instructors and/or chair to resolve any courses that are not in compliance with campus policy, or that are in conflict. After you have resolved any discrepancies, feel free to contact Curricular Services to send a revised copy of your hour spreading and/or standard hours report.
For Summer Session offerings, check special policies and information in the Summer Session Handbook
Check for appropriate number of instructional minutes per credit/type of instruction
The number of credits for which a course is offered must accurately reflect the number of scheduled contact hours for faculty student instruction and/or discussion. A research paper on its own will not normally be considered the equivalent of an hour of faculty student instruction.
General Guidelines: One credit is given for about: 15 hours of lecture during the semester, or 15 to 30 hours of discussion, or 30 to 45 hours of laboratory. Contact your academic deans’s office for guidelines specific to your school/college.
For example, a three credit course would meet for three lecture hours (or two sessions that total 150 minutes) per week for the semester. A three credit course could meet for two lecture hours per week and also meet each week for a two hour discussion section. (Taken from ‘Instructions for Completing Course Proposal Forms for Divisional Committee Review‘ (PDF))
- Query Library – Timetable Audit Query
Query Tips: Use this query to check the length (in minutes) of classes you’ve entered online. Consult the reports titled “Master” and “Faculty”.
Check for overlapping or conflicting times if using department controlled space
If you are using classroom or seminar space that your department controls, ensure that the room schedule is conflict-free. Please note that all non-general assignment classroom locations carry forward on your schedule of classes from the previous like semester. It is up to you to ensure that the classrooms are available for the new semester.