The Great COVID Classroom-Assigning Adventure: Fall 2021 Edition
Due to ongoing uncertainties in the spring around the state of COVID response this fall, campus deviated somewhat from standard practices around scheduling classes for fall. When building the schedule of classes for a typical upcoming term, departmental curricular representatives request General Assignment (GA) classrooms as needed. The Curricular Services team reviews class setups for accuracy, makes necessary corrections, and then proceeds with GA classroom assigning. Before enrollment gets underway, departments have a chance to request changes to room assignments and make other adjustments as needed, e.g., rescheduling classes that did not get a GA-classroom assignment to times that have rooms available.
Given the uncertainties about fall in early 2021, the fall schedule of classes was built and released without GA classrooms assigned. Thousands of class sections displayed in Course Search & Enroll with “PENDING ROOM” as their classroom while continuing students enrolled in their fall classes.
In late May, campus leadership made the decision that GA classrooms should be assigned with the assumption that social distancing would not be required in the fall. Departments were given a chance to revisit their fall classes before Curricular Services proceeded with room assignments in advance of first-year SOAR getting underway on June 14. After Curricular Services maximized the use of GA classrooms, over 700 class sections were still without a room assignment. This was partly due to construction projects taking some classrooms offline for fall, initially including over 60 classrooms in Van Hise. In addition, campus collectively overscheduled on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leading to an acute shortage of instructional spaces on those days.
Thankfully, several factors allowed the number of classes with unassigned rooms to steadily diminish over a number of weeks. A wide range of departments, schools, and colleges allowed the Curricular Services team to schedule others’ classes into locally controlled lecture halls, conference rooms, and classrooms. Early contributions of non-GA rooms from Geosciences, Statistics, Business, and Housing were especially helpful in getting things rolling. The RO also made “house calls” to departments with large numbers of unassigned sections to discuss a range of strategies to address the issue. Strategies included identifying departmental spaces that could accommodate classes; rescheduling classes with no or very low enrollment to non-peak times with available rooms; cancelling sections of under-enrolled elective courses; reducing requested room capacities and enrollment capacities to fit classes into available smaller spaces; and more.
Thanks to these efforts from departments, campus facility partners, and RO team members, the number of classes without rooms shrank to just over 100. Then, as repair plans for Van Hise became more clear, campus leadership approved scheduling classes into a limited set of classrooms in Van Hise, i.e., those least likely to experience disruptions from construction noise. The Curricular Services team will be making assignments into these rooms the week of July 19, after which we hope few if any class sections will still need a room assignment.
Throughout the entire process of assigning fall classrooms, the patience and cooperation of campus partners has been greatly appreciated, as have the tireless efforts of the Curricular Services team!