Course scheduling constraints pose challenges for departments

Students scheduling their courses for the upcoming semester must rush to beat their classmates to the best time slots, but faculty also face challenges when scheduling their classes.

Prior to the close of the earliest registration window for any upcoming semester, each undergraduate and graduate department must submit a prospective layout of all courses it intends to offer and the days and times for those courses. Departments must also submit corresponding room requests to the University registrar, using the web-based Department Schedule Validator.

The DSV—designed to eliminate the need for paper submissions—is one of many provisions of the Course Schedule Policy, which aims to distribute classes throughout the day and not just during highly requested times. Under the policy, a department is only allowed to schedule up to 50 percent of its courses within the most popular block of time: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“It is common across higher education institutions for there to be a strong desire for courses offered between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. However, only offering courses during ‘prime time’ would not be practical,” wrote Frank Blalark, assistant vice provost and university registrar, in an email.

Blalark also explained that some of the challenges when scheduling classes include physical space limitations, competing time priorities and student curricular demands.

Joseph Nadeau, director of undergraduate studies for civil and environmental engineering, wrote in an email that his department has had to reschedule multiple courses to different days and times in response to a shortage of classrooms, but added that relative consistency still prevails across terms.

“Due to prerequisite structures and need to avoid course conflicts, there is not much change in days nor times year to year,” he wrote.

Rey Chow, Anne Firor Scott professor of literature and director of the Program in Literature, wrote in an email that another challenge when submitting schedules is the size and type of the classrooms in question.

“Seminars are sometimes assigned lecture rooms or [large] classrooms, and larger classes are sometimes given small classrooms,” Chow wrote. “Colleagues who teach film [sometimes] do not have classrooms with ideal acoustics, lighting, or AV equipment.”

Departments can input the required characteristics for rooms in which a class will be taught. There is no limit to the number of characteristics that can be entered, but if there are no rooms that meet all of the criteria, then no room will be assigned.

Elizabeth Bucholz, associate director of undergraduate studies for biomedical engineering, wrote in an email that conflicts can arise when two departments schedule large classes during identical times.

“If other departments have scheduled their large classes at the same time as our large classes, someone has to move out of that time period as the Pratt School only has a certain number of large classrooms,” she wrote.

Bucholz added that the availability of lab space is a key constraint for engineering departments, as lab space is in high demand throughout the week.

Richard MacPhail, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in chemistry, wrote in an email that his department often works with other departments whenever potential conflicts or overlaps are expected to occur.

Another Course Schedule Policy regulation requires at least 40 percent of all departmental course offerings to meet either three or more days per week or two days per week in the Monday-Wednesday, Wednesday-Friday or Monday-Friday pattern. Only up to 50 percent of classes can use the Tuesday-Thursday pattern.

Mary Boatwright, chair of classical studies, wrote in an email that the DSV does not help smaller departments—including many humanities departments—because their courses end up scheduled at inconvenient times during the day.

“In fact, the Validator is a killer for many humanities departments and for other departments that offer courses and majors that are not seen as leading to a job,” Boatwright explained. “I often get the feeling that as much as a student might want to take ancient Greek or Roman history, for instance, [their] first priority is economics, pre-health and other courses that promise better job placement after Duke.”

Boatwright added that courses held at the beginning and toward the end of the day “almost always under-enroll,” with the largest enrollment for these time slots often consisting of athletes who have to schedule around practices.

“I am very happy to have courses for this great group,” she wrote. “But Duke administration wants us to enroll much more than seven students per class.”

Departments also consider potential conflicts with student curricular and major requirements when submitting schedules for review.

“When scheduling, we also consider our freshman, sophomore, junior and senior schedules and the most common second majors to prevent important required courses form conflicting with our scheduled classes,” Bucholz wrote. “For example, we schedule sophomore BME classes that don’t conflict with ECE 110L or ME 221L as most of our students take both the BME-required sophomore classes and the other department classes.”

Faculty also noted the constraints imposed by the availability of teaching assistants and the scheduling flexibility of faculty members with young children.

“It’s a pretty complicated jigsaw puzzle of moving pieces, and no matter how well we try to anticipate conflicts, inevitably conflicts arise,” Bucholz wrote.

Students also commented on their own scheduling experiences for the upcoming semester.

Freshman Jeffrey Wubbenhorst said it was important to him that all of his classes fit together with respect to proximity, and the times courses were offered often played a role as well.

During the registration period for the 2016 Spring semester, seniors had one window, juniors and sophomores had three windows and freshmen had two windows—a change from previous years when juniors, sophomores and freshmen all had three windows.

Blalark noted that his office is open to reducing the number of windows if doing so would provide a more equitable arrangement for students. He explained that the window system is based on server load constraints, but performance concerns have become less of an issue recently, allowing the number of windows to be reduced for this year’s freshman class.

“I would prefer a single window because whoever gets up the earliest is most likely to get their classes,” said freshman Molly Chen.

Freshman Alex Moore, on the other hand, said he favored a system with more registration windows in the hopes that the website would not load as slowly during registration, adding that a “back” button within the ACES program would also be helpful.

The Student Information Services and Systems office is currently collaborating with Duke Student Government to develop a new user interface. Blalark explained that SISS and DSG are working to provide a “modern user interface presentation that utilizes common web interface displays and most importantly, a back button.”

Kathy Bader, assistant vice provost and director of SISS, wrote in an email that the SISS office has been positioning itself for this new interface for several years. The rollout date, however, has not been finalized.

“We are really excited about the new interface and feel we are getting some very good and serious participation from the students this time around,” she wrote. “It will certainly be an ongoing process and dialogue.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that juniors, sophomores and freshmen prior to this year had two registration windows. They had three windows prior to this year. Nadeau's title was also corrected after the wrong departments were previously included in the story. The Chronicle regrets the errors.