Hello A-Society! Hard to believe we’re a third of the way through courses already! Bearing that in mind, midterms are fast approaching. Be sure to fit in some review time each night, and (try to) get plenty of sleep!
As I hope you are all aware, the University of Waterloo’s Scheduling, Timetabling, and Examination Project has been working towards implementing a new course scheduling software. The scheduling software, Infosilem, is slated for implementation this Spring 2014. The objectives of the new system are to create conflict-free schedules for students, and to maximize space utilization on campus.
Where the current scheduling process is completed entirely by hand, the new system will be an automated process that populates schedules according to input constraints. Constraints will include items such as travel time from classroom to classroom, class size, consecutive hours in class, and total daily hours in class, among others. While the software will be run through the Scheduling Office, it is important to know that each Department will continue to dictate their faculty teaching responsibilities as per current approval processes. While all of the teaching space on campus will be centralized, lecture halls will be organized into “pavilions” according to Department. Students from each Department will be given first priority for the teaching spaces within their respective Departments.
The new software will likely have little impact on the core schedule of engineering undergraduates. It is important to remember that the Faculty of Engineering is unique in that its numerous Departments offer only co-op mandatory programs. Our students are grouped into cohorts that study multiple degree required courses together each term. Given the fact that it is generally accepted that faculty be available to teach between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, engineering schedules will likely see little change from how they are currently scheduled. During the 3rd schedule simulation using the Infosilem software (which used the Fall 2013 existing schedule as the inputs for a mock course selection), Engineering student schedules saw an increase in: average elapsed time on campus from 9.2 to 9.4 hours; average maximum lecture hours from 7.5 to 7.6; and average consecutive lecture hours from 4.7 to 5.9. While at first these numbers may appear daunting, please note that this was the result of a completely automated schedule simulation; Engineering Departments will be in contact with the Scheduling Office to make manual tweaks to fit each Department’s needs. Lastly, a number of constraints were still not accurately defined during the simulation. I am very confident that we will see improvement.
The other significant improvement that the Infosilem software will boast is consideration of student interest in courses through Course Selection Week. Believe it or not, our current system (Pre-Enrollment) does not consider student demand in dictating whether or not a course will run! This new system will take into account student interest in courses, and allocate a course in the calendar accordingly; thereby increasing the chance you will study an elective you want to study.
I hope that you have a clearer picture of how scheduling will occur at Waterloo moving forward. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to stop by the EngSoc office and I will do my best to answer them. Study hard! Drew
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