Unravelling the Ball Of String: The Truth from the Frontline of Timetabling
“It is as if someone has made a bet to come up with the most insane timetable possible.”
“Timetabling need to get their act together.”
Welcome to the world of a University timetabler, or scheduler at the University of Manchester (UoM). The above statements come from UoM academic colleagues but I’d hazard a guess that you could walk into the timetabling office of any UK Higher Education (HE) institution, and the staff would trade similar tales.
The majority of voices within the Open Knowledge in Higher Education (OKHE) arena are academic and therefore focussed on the main pillars of HE, that of teaching and research. Logistical practices get less daylight, and it is with this piece that I seek to share what goes into constructing teaching timetables and that the outcomes are often the result of incompatible requirements. At each stage I consider how scheduling practice can become more open.
Scheduling at UoM is not software or algorithmically led. It is a human-managed process. Specially trained schedulers use software (Syllabus +) to store, manage and sort the timetable data. Syllabus + helps to visualise the constraints and possibilities for the days and times available by calculating the reasons an activity cannot go in a certain slot, based on the timetable data submitted that year.
Who Owns a Timetable?
Throughout the OKHE unit, the concept of ownership has impacted the way we have discussed the extent to which something either is or could be open. That might be teaching materials developed and shared online, or the drive to make the elements of the research process more transparent. In each case an owner or owners, regardless of how open and altruistic they may be, can be identified.
When it comes to the University timetable however, I can imagine that nobody would want to claim ownership. So where does the information come from?
- Activity data. This is the information about how a unit is structured. Unit staff submit their course requirements, e.g. One 2-hour lecture for the whole cohort in a tiered theatre per week for 10 weeks, a one-hour seminar for 25 students in a flat room in odd numbered teaching weeks, three-hour laboratories in the internal combustion engine lab every week from teaching week 7 etc.
- Course compatibility. This is the statement of units that cannot clash, or a way to codify a programme structure to enable the visualisation of potential clashes created by unique combinations of course units. This data is owned by those who create and develop degree programmes.
- Staff availability. Information about when staff with formal Flexible Working Arrangements (FWAs) are not available to teach is collected by People & Organisational Development (P&OD, or Human Resources). The days and times that staff with approved Teaching Availability Arrangements are unable to teach is provided by the Dean of the Faculty. This is sensitive information, and it would be wrong and unethical to publish anything other than anonymised summaries of the data.
This data is captured by specially designed spreadsheets and uploaded directly into Syllabus + for the schedulers to generate a timetable. As the saying goes, “good data in, good data out, bad data in, bad data out”.
Timetables are the product of everything that academic colleagues state as requirements, constraints and preferences. They are the product of the predictions and calculations of Admissions teams. They are the product of the applications and approvals of requests from any teaching staff not to be available to teach Monday to Friday, 0900–1800.
In other words, schedulers do not make up, edit or delete the information submitted. They make decisions based on balancing the requirements presented via the data and combine this with an attempt to meet the outcomes of a scheduling survey conducted to canvass students and staff on their timetable preferences.
The preferences are codified in the University Timetabling Code of Practice. This sits behind an authenticated staff log-in. Should colleagues from other HE institutions be seeking examples of other practice, they would not be able to access this page.
To promote open practice, I would propose that following each scheduling period, the Faculty Scheduling teams compose a reflective piece, identifying the factors that went into generating the timetables and any specific challenges and barriers that may have contributed to the top preferences not being satisfied.
The above overview along with all the detail of the standard operating procedures is available online but only to University staff who have been given access. It would be worthwhile, in the name of open practice, to publish a high-level summary of the practical logistics of scheduling so that staff and students could be informed about the balancing act that goes on behind the scenes.
Everything Is Connected
Scheduling is a zero-sum game. For every activity scheduled at 0900, another must be scheduled at 1700. For every lunch hour granted, an earlier start or a later finish is needed. Sessions in specialist technical spaces are often staffed by colleagues who are the only person that can facilitate the demonstration of a particular skill. If a programme over recruits, more repeats of sessions are needed and the cost on the individual humans can be high when they are a single point of failure.
Conole indicates that open practice “takes into account the interplay between stakeholders, organisational elements and resources”. In the UoM case, management has failed to connect the dots between the different factors that create a timetable outcome. The true owners may not even know they own the timetable, but every approved FWA, every optional unit added to a programme structure, every increased recruitment target, all of which are out of the hands of those who construct the timetables all combine to generate a single University timetable, which the ultimate stakeholders, the students, live out. Recent changes to the process of scheduling make it easier than ever to trace these lines and this is a positive step in generating a more open awareness for all.
@OKHE1
