UniversiTools Classroom Scheduler

Making best use of teaching spaces and facilities is a challenging exercise that any university, college, or vocational institute faces. UniversiTools Classroom Scheduler helps you assign courses to classrooms in an optimal, best-fit way.

Effective allocation of courses to rooms brings along many benefits. For instance, you will see that, for the summer semester, Classroom Scheduler clears for you certain floors or even whole buildings; you do not need to use them at all. You will indeed go green and reduced energy consumption.

When generating schedules, and as a prerequisite for good results, Classroom Scheduler takes into account room characteristics and course requirements.

SETUP

Running the Classroom Scheduler requires defining room characteristics, providing necessary course data, and setting preference/override rules.

Define room characteristics:

• Room type (classroom, conference room, hall, laboratory, gymnasium, dark room)
• Location (campus, zone, building, floor, floor section)
• Feature (availability of Internet connection, projector, interactive board)
• Seating capacity
• Possibility to exceed seating capacity

Provide course data:

• Course requirements (Internet connection, projector, multi-media)
• Number of students enrolled

Set preference/override rules:

• By room capacity, to emphasize preference for capacity when allocating a room
• By room feature, to emphasize preference for features when allocating a room
• By room type, to emphasize preference for room type when allocating a room
• Feature over Capacity rule. When more than one room is available for a course, the feature match will override the capacity match
• Capacity over Feature rule. When more than one room is available for a course, the capacity match will override the feature match
• Same-room group, where different courses or sections are grouped together in the same room

 

SCHEDULING ENGINE

Once the set-up is complete, run the Classroom Scheduler to automatically generate your schedules and see which rooms are assigned to which courses.

Graphical representations allow you to clearly see the schedule for any given room on campus.

Analytic data gives you insight on the usage of rooms, floors, and buildings, as well as on percent usage across the hours and days of the week.

Print physical copies of the classroom schedules to post on campus for the students to see.