Talking with Students

Over the past few weeks, the Instructional Space Task Force has sought substantive discussions with students on the issue of scheduling.  On March 14th, we met with UPUA and on March 24th, we met with CCSG.  The conversations in both cases were insightful, substantive and wide-ranging.

In order to summarize and facilitate a more general discussion, some of the main points that emerged with regard to our three questions will be highlighted below.

What Works about the Current Process for Course Scheduling

  • The staggered way in which those with more credits have priority
  • The watch list is great
  • Ged Ed classes with a lot of sections and options for times.

Challenges of the Current Process 

  • No way to plan far in advance for courses
  • Lack of communication with regard to changing pre-requisites
  • Better faculty training for how to use technology in the classroom
  • Availability of required courses at UP and on the campuses
  • Different populations of students have different needs regarding the best time to schedule courses (for example, different populations of adult learners have different preferred scheduling times.)
  • Low enrollment often leads to last minute cancellation of courses, which makes adjusting the schedule very difficult since many other classes are full at that time

Priorities

  1. Ensure time to degree is not impacted by lack of course availability
  2. Maximize efficiency of scheduling: diversify the timing and logic of schedule
  3. Communication with Students
  4. Training for advisors
  5. Match instructional need with space

It would be great to hear from more students in the comments on this post about your experience scheduling courses at Penn State.

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