Overview

The purpose of the scheduling section of the Maplewood system is to help you to construct the best timetable for your school. Since many decisions in the timetabling process are best made by the people within the school, the emphasis of this scheduling section is to provide as much information as possible to help make these decisions.

In short, the scheduling process consists of three major segments: Entering the Students' Choices, Building the School Timetable and Loading (blending) the two together. The following outline shows the steps involved during the scheduling procedure. These may be varied to match the school's characteristics and preferences.

The master timetable for the coming year may be planned without interfering in any way with the operation of the school. This is possible because the storage of this year's file information and next year's information is in two separate directories in the computer.

The scheduling process begins with Initialize Scheduling. This step copies certain files from this year's sub-directory into the scheduling sub-directory. This makes re-entering last year's homerooms, courses and classes unnecessary if they will be similar for the next year.

Secondary schools enter the students' choices (course selections for next year) and then produce various tallies of choices with appropriate lists for verifying the entries and analyzing the choices. This information is used to determine the number of classes required for each course.

As well, scheduling can be done using one of the three methods or a combination of them: manually (using choice analysis as much as possible, along with Timetable of a Specific Group), automatically (automatic placement) or semi-automatically (using Manual Placement).

The master timetable may be built through Maplewood using Master Builder. Here teaching times may be assigned to classes based on the availability of time, location and teachers and students. Master Builder is designed to accommodate a wide range of scheduling circumstances.

When defining class assignments, the system provides a clear indication of when the desired room and teacher are free or otherwise assigned.

The teachers and rooms for classes may be defined before placement, in which case the automatic placement feature will avoid conflicts associated with those assignments. Classes can be "fixed" in specific periods, in which case the fixed classes are not altered by the automatic feature of the scheduler. Multiple rooms may only be added after a class is scheduled and if the school has more than a 1 day cycle. Multiple rooms are used when a class is taught in different rooms through the school's cycle. e.g. on day 1 it is taught in room 101, on day 2 it is taught in room 17.

Master Builder has a limit of 15 periods + homeroom (16 attendance taking periods) and 16 days

Advantages of Period Patterns Vs Basic Periods

The main advantage of using Patterns is greater flexibility.This is problematic for most Ontario Secondary Schools that offer the Civics and Career Studies for half of a semester.

The magic number for patterns is 16 and although no school would really set up 16 semesters, it is advantageous to offer such flexibility. With the patterns, a school can define any kind of a class duration or rotation scenario.

Another advantage to the Patterns is that a school names the Patterns and Sets of Patterns, thus creating a completely customized set up. The patterns may edited at any time, allowing for mid-year revisions and additions.