GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE TEACHING SPACE MANAGEMENT

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GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE

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TEACHING SPACE MANAGEMENT

1. Introduction

There is a long history of good practice in the area of space management and timetabling and this is addressed in the first section of this good practice guide, entitled background.

The rest of the good practice guide is laid out to the framework SUMS Consulting typically adopts when embarking on a review of teaching space management. This framework typically consists of four layers – the institutional drivers, the policy, the process itself and the enablers of the process, and is shown below:

Figure 1: FRAMEWORK

If you have any questions about Space Management or Timetabling please contact Andrea Buttle or Claire Taylor at SUMS Consulting:

Email: [email protected] or [email protected] POLICY TEACHING SPACE SYSTEM STUDENT SATISFACTION SPACE MANAGEMENT PEOPLE PUBLISH MANAGE CHANGES Enablers Timetabling Process Drivers CHANGING CURRICULUM COLLECT DATA TIMETABLE AD-HOC ROOMBOOKING TEACHING SPACE PLANNING MONITOR TEACHING SPACE USE TIMELINE

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2. Background

For many years HEFCE and the National Audit Office (NAO) have pressed the Higher Education (HE) sector to manage academic space more effectively and to plan for new provision more scientifically.

 1987 University Grants commission (UGC) "Notes on Control and Guidance" for University Building Projects, which provided rules for calculating floor areas based on student numbers in different academic disciplines

 1996 National Audit Office (NAO) report on "Space Management in Higher Education: A Good Practice Guide"

 2002 Newcastle University Space Management Project

 2005-2006 the UK Higher Education Space Management Group(SMG) commissioned a series of reports that can be found at www.smg.ac.uk

SMG key statements include:

 HEIs with 100% of teaching space centrally timetabled have 17% less space than those that do not

 HEIs that charge for space have 12% less net non-residential area than those that do not charge. In the policy document, "Carbon reduction target and strategy for higher education in England", HEFCE makes a clear commitment to maintain focus on space management through the Capital Investment Framework and to communicate the link between efficient use of space and environmental

sustainability.

Since the introduction of the £9,000p.a. tuition fee in 2012, the funding environment for universities has changed considerably. Government funding has increasingly been replaced by tuition fees and capital requirements increasingly have to be met by the university. Finance committees are commonly seeking to achieve a 6% surplus to ensure adequate funds for reinvestment.

In 2015 Professor Ian Diamond, as chair of the Universities UK Efficiency Task Group, published his second report on efficiency, effectiveness and value for money. This applauded the work of the HE sector in bringing teaching space per student down by nearly 17% in the last decade. Whilst applauding this, the paper recommended that there needed to be continued focus on agreeing metrics to manage the performance of the HE estate.

Definitions

Space management covers both internal and external space belonging to the university. A discussion of external spaces, sport and accommodation is outside the scope of the following guidance.

Teaching space is defined as lecture theatres, seminar rooms and specialist teaching rooms such as laboratories.

There are HE sector definitions for key space measures that have been established by the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE). They collect annually a range of measures called the Estates Management Record (EMR) which are available to subscribers of heidi - Higher Education Information Database for Institutions.

These have been refined in the last five years and there is a current proposal from AUDE (Association of University Directors of Estates) to create 12 key performance indicators for Estates across the HE Sector. This follows on from the Diamond report recommendation about the need to agree key metrics for the sector to monitor.

Of these 12 KPIs, two pertain to space and are:  Non-residential income per m2 GIA  M2 GIA per per fte (staff and student)

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When considering teaching space it is useful to use:  Space NIA per student (taught and research)  Teaching space per taught student.

Two EMR measures pertain to teaching space utilisation and are defined as follows:  Room Occupancy = Total Occupancy / Hours Used x Room Capacity x 100  Room Frequency = Total Bookings / Total Bookings Available x 100 Utilisation is also often quoted and this is the product of frequency and occupancy.

 Room Utilisation = Occupancy x Frequency x 100 For further details refer to the HESA website:

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_studrec&task=show_file&mnl=13042&href=a/index.ht ml

In EMR the room frequency can be given as the booked number or the actual number of times a room is used as recorded by space survey. The former represents planned use, the latter actual use. SUMS’ preference is for the latter and SUMS recommends measuring the discrepancy between bookings made and those used. This measure is defined as:

No show = (Total bookings made – Total bookings used) / Total bookings made x 100

3. Drivers

Gaining an understanding of the key elements of the institution’s corporate plan will put in context the relative importance of teaching space management. The Estates and Teaching and Learning Strategies will also document strategic initiatives affecting teaching space management such as:

 Student satisfaction

 Space management e.g. planned growth or consolidation  Changing curriculum.

Student Satisfaction

Student satisfaction is important in the new fee regime and the easiest way to benchmark student satisfaction is to look at the NSS score for Q13. Q13 asks whether the timetables works efficiently as far as the student is concerned. Universities can also compare departmental responses and see whether there is departmental variation that needs addressing.

A few universities are looking at allowing students teaching-free days to enable them to work part-time whilst they study. This can be done where the taught contact hours per week of the student are low. Most universities have implemented personal student timetables that can be sent to the student’s mobile phone and this is now an expected service.

Space Management

HESA collects statistics called the Estates Management Record (EMR) from universities every year and so enables universities to benchmark their performance against each other. Benchmarking the numbers in isolation from any understanding of the Estate can be misleading. Similarly benchmarking needs to take into account the nature of the business conducted by the university. Therefore at the space

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© SUMS 2015 Version Final Page 5 management level there is greater merit in considering mission group averages rather than HE sector averages. When addressing teaching space utilisation, then HE sector averages can be useful. SUMS’ preferred approach is to ask a small group of institutions to share space survey results. By restricting the comparison you can be selective and can take the time to appreciate how their key performance

measures have been calculated and the underlying issues and processes.

For example, five SUMS Russell Group members submitted the following figures for their EMR (2013/14) return to HESA. Institution Gross internal area (‘000s m2) Income (£Mpa) Income/m2 NIA (£/m2)

GIA per staff and student (m2/FTE) A 499 991 1,987 11.8 B 385 583 1,515 12.1 C 229 333 1,452 10.0 D 536 538 1,003 12.5 E 438 426 972 12.6

In this instance, university C shows better performance on the GIA per staff and student metric than the other universities and the other universities may choose to use this as a target.

SUMS has benchmarked information collected by space survey and identified a wide range in teaching space management performance:

Measure Best in Class Worst in Class

Room Frequency 83 42

Room Occupancy 61 38

No Show 4 24

Room Frequency

Room frequency records the number of occasions a general purpose teaching room is used and is the measure that most clearly indicates how well the timetabling process is working. In SUMS’ experience averages greater than 70% are evidence of good practice.

It is important that frequency analysis goes beyond a calculation of the average frequency for a teaching room and examines the:

 Distribution of use throughout the day i.e. how badly does frequency drop for the first and last sessions of the day and the lunch hour?

 Distribution of use throughout the week i.e. is there low levels of use on Wednesday and Friday afternoons?

 Variation in location i.e. is there variation in the booking frequency across different buildings, with remote locations being least popular?

The chart below compares the actual average room frequency taken by space survey for two different institutions. The one institution centrally allocates space whilst the other has a bidding system. It is noteworthy that the institution where bidding takes place is achieving a good average frequency because space is tight due to growth. The cause of the Wednesday afternoon dip is invariably due to policy, although the other institution has made excellent use of the space by timetabling optional modules and PG courses during this period.

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Optimal room occupancy requires the best fit of teaching group sizes to room availability. To achieve this requires data to be derived from student information systems. Some institutions choose not to measure room occupancy as part of the space survey, arguing that it is influenced by absenteeism over which they have no control. It is the hardest key measure to improve, because it is affected by the fit of the room stock to teaching needs and to improve this takes time. In SUMS’ experience actual occupancies greater than 50% can be achieved. A low occupancy may indicate poor fit of teaching rooms to needs and this should inform the Estate planning process.

No Show

The no show measure compares the booked frequency with the actual frequency. In SUMS’ experience if this measure is between 20-30% it indicates block booking. Block booking occurs when departments book rooms for a term or for a whole set of courses rather than for individual events. Poor performance can be tackled in two ways:

 Address the root cause by transferring teaching events and class list data from the course management and student record systems, rather than relying on departmental administrators to submit the information (human nature will always inflate class sizes and events to allow some leeway for last-minute changes)

 Publish space survey information and annually name and shame the worst departments every year. Some institutions fine offenders, but it is difficult to pitch the fine such that well-funded departments take notice of it, whilst poorly funded departments are not penalised too heavily. This measure can be improved relatively quickly. One SUMS Member has shown that it can be reduced down to low single figures.

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Changing Curriculum

Curriculum is changing for three reasons:

 A desire to respond to student needs better e.g. to improve employability  A view that there should be more interdisciplinary teaching

 The use of technology in the classroom.

The need to respond more agilely to these changes is starting to impact the timetabling process and requires more flexibility.

The employability agenda is driving more placements for students. Some universities are also seeking to broaden the student’s education though the introduction of electives. Electives can either be set at a specific time during the week to ensure all students have the opportunity to take any of them or they can be woven through the curriculum. If they are woven through the curriculum they represent much more of a challenge to the timetable, because it may be difficult to guarantee to the student that the elective they wish to take can be made to fit with their core studies.

Interdisciplinary teaching such as the introduction of liberal arts, joint honours and major/minor honours has been around for a long time, but is currently resurgent. Furthermore in subjects such as engineering and science some universities are moving to a common first year: before the student specialises in later years. The Cambridge curriculum has taken this form for many years, but others are now adopting elements of this.

The last item is relatively new, technology in the classroom. New ways of teaching such as the “flipped classroom” require different layouts for teaching and reconfiguration of the teaching Estate that cannot be achieved overnight. Universities are still building large lecture theatres yet current literature says that lecture theatres are not the future. Approaches to teaching continue to evolve, radical change will take time.

4. Policy

Whether the institution wishes to split the space management policy from a specific timetabling policy is an institutional choice. Development of policy will require an institution to:

 Identify the Space Champion

 Identify the most suitable committee to own policy

 Impress on senior management the importance of effective space management. Policy should aim to:

 Improve the quality of the discussion by establishing some principles and moving the debate away from supposition and the classic "it has always been done this way"

 Become the focus for debate when changes are needed

 Give administrators the authority to act in accordance with the policy (and not have to continually justify their actions to unhappy staff).

Space Management Policy

The content of the policy will be institution-dependent and should be reviewed annually. It should cover the following elements:

 Institutional context  Core principles

 How space is to be allocated  How space use can be changed

 Techniques to be deployed for effective space management  How space use will be monitored.

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 "All space belongs to the university and historical use of space does not confer any automatic right to occupy it."

The policy will define space categories such as central or specialist or office and in the allocation section determine who has allocation rights and provide further guidance such as: "Part-time staff shall be expected to use a ‘hot-desk’ if they work under 0.5 FTE”.

Policy will also determine what process should be followed for major and minor changes of space use for example: "Models such as the HEFCE-recommended ‘AUDE Toolkit for the Sustainable Estate’ will be used to set targets for each faculty/department and a timeframe for compliance will be set by the space committee."

Techniques that can be deployed to facilitate effective space management are:  Centralised Timetabling

 Space Charging.

Finally, there needs to be a mechanism to monitor changes as to how space is used such as:

 "The space committee shall periodically monitor trends for example the use of Virtual Learning Environments, blended learning, computer facilities, social space and home working to ensure that University spaces are fit for purpose."

Space Charging

Within the SUMS membership there are some sceptics as to the benefits of space charging. In one case where space charging has been dropped, it was stated that the benefits of space charging accrue in the first two years and hence it has no long-term value. Ultimately, it is senior management decision that depends on the university budgeting model. Even if space is not directly charged for, space costs should be transparent so that decisions can be informed appropriately.

Charging academic units for utilities is an option that is now being considered in the light of carbon reduction targets and has been in use in at least one Russell Group university for many years.

Timetabling Policy

The content of the policy will be institution-dependent and should be reviewed annually. It should cover the following elements and encompass the key principles summarised below:

Time

 The length of the teaching day

 Times that are reserved for activities other than teaching

 The minimum teaching period (typically one hour but can be 45 or 90 minutes)

 Rules concerning when multi-periods should start e.g. if a department wishes to run three-hour teaching sessions in an institution with a 9am-6pm working day, it is good practice to ensure that these all start at either 9am, noon or 3pm

 Evening/weekend teaching arrangements and the support available  Use of lunchtime periods with provision for breaks for students and staff  Acceptable use of Wednesday afternoon teaching periods.

Rooms

 All general purpose teaching rooms will be pooled

 All teaching rooms and their timetables will be stored in the central system (including local facilities)

 All teaching rooms will be subject to random space audits

 Criteria under which the institution will allow specialist space to be timetabled separately  The minimum acceptable standard for a teaching room should be appended to the policy.

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 Criteria governing staff availability to teach and whether they are to be allocated teaching-free days for research

 Staff are expected to teach at any of the institution’s locations as long as adequate travel time has been allowed

 Teaching staff are responsible for notifying the Timetabling Office of any course or event cancellations/rearrangements.

Timetabling Roles and Responsibilities

 Central timetabling office service provision

 The information that is required from academic units

 The responsibilities of other support services such as Estates, AV and conference office  If necessary, state academics should not be responsible for timetabling because it is an

administrative task. Timetabling Priorities

Resource constraints lead to a need to prioritise some students and courses ahead of others, e.g.:  Disabled students for whom appropriate facilities may not be available in all rooms  Part-time postgraduate courses with teaching on a specific day

 Placement students who can only be taught on certain days  Visiting/part-time lecturers with restricted availability.

It is important to acknowledge these priorities or constraints and take account of them in the timetabling process, and document them for the benefit of staff.

Multiple Sites

Where an institution has multiple campuses, it should state whether staff and students are expected to travel between them and if so, the allowed travel time used in assembling the timetable.

A good example of a timetabling policy can be found here:

www.port.ac.uk/staffessentials/departments/services/ctu/timetablepolicy

5. Teaching Space Planning

Good planning of space requires that institutions model their space based on an accurate central database of current space use and that space managers facilitate changes of space use to meet the university's business needs.

Space modelling can be done in different ways and at different levels of detail. At a high level space norms can be used. At an intermediate level the space audit data can be used to undertake a teaching needs analysis and eventually it is good practice to simulate the timetable for proposed changes.

Modelling using Space Norms

The Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) built on earlier work by the SMG and put together a model of the sustainable Estate where calculations can be made of the size of Estate required given information concerning student numbers by subject.

http://www.smg.ac.uk/AUDE%20Toolkit.html

This model also suggests norms for certain spaces so that more than just the teaching Estate can be determined. The norms are based on the EMS benchmarking data. It does also have norms for specialist teaching space for students. SUMS has endeavoured to benchmark specialist teaching space, but with limited success.

Some universities use the model, while others prefer to use their own model. The key to success is to use a mechanism to determine whether appropriate space is given to both academic departments and services.

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Teaching Needs Analysis

A teaching needs analysis seeks to determine how well the class sizes required matches the room size availability. Class size required is the number of hours in a week for a given class size and can be determined by the timetabling system. The room size availability takes the capacity of a given room and multiplies it by the number of teaching hours in the week (see case study 1).

Timetable Simulation

Current timetabling software is very powerful and the full functionality is rarely used. Typically more use can be made of it as a simulator; this can be done in-house, or commissioned from the software vendor or an external consultant. HE estates are undergoing considerable change with some institutions consolidating onto one campus, some merging and some adding new buildings. Others have chosen to extend the working day from 5pm to 6pm or even 7pm to avoid the capital investment of new build. The opportunity to explore the impact of these changes on the existing teaching room stock is offered by the software. Similarly questions concerning how much further student growth can be accommodated can also be tested and answered.

Case Study - Teaching Needs Analysis

The graph below is taken from a SUMS review and shows very clearly a shortage of seminar rooms and underused capacity in rooms greater than thirty, although the largest lecture theatre is well used. This will lead to poor occupancy figures as small classes will have to be accommodated in the larger rooms.

6. The Timetabling Process

The annual timetabling process consists of the following steps: 1. Collect Data

2. Timetable 3. Manage Changes 4. Ad hoc Room Booking.

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Collect Data

The basic data from which a timetable is assembled consists of rooms and their attributes, class lists, teaching events, staff availability and allocations to teaching events and is drawn from a variety of sources.

Student Data

To minimise data handling, course enrolments should be imported into the timetabling system from student information systems. This will guarantee accurate class size data. If class size data is collected from Schools it will invariably be inflated (just in case).

Timetabling systems have the capability to allocate classes into seminar groups and eliminate this administrative chore. Some SUMS members do use this functionality. It is a policy choice whether you allocate based on certain rules or whether you allow students to sign up to seminar groups.

Recommended practice is to centrally allocate students to seminar groups and clash-test so that comprehensive personal timetables can be produced. If Schools or Faculties then wish to rearrange the seminar groups, let them. There is functionality in one of the timetabling software packages to allow students to self-select seminar groups.

Course Data

To minimise data handling, teaching event data should ideally be imported from the course management system (typically part of the student record system). However, course management data often does not extend to the teaching mode i.e. 1-hour lecture followed by 1-hour seminar taught in groups of no more than 25 students. Data is collected in a variety of ways such as:

 Use of paper or spreadsheet forms, which module leaders are required to complete

 A roll forward of last year’s events is printed out and module leaders are asked to note changes  Web forms are used to collect the data and automatically input it back into the timetabling

system.

Course management systems do set the course rules and programme pathways i.e. what modules are compulsory and what are optional and this already sets constraints.

Staff Data

Staff data can be transferred from the HR or payroll system into the timetabling system to eliminate data re-entry. The payroll system is typically the more accurate.

Staff Availability

Staff allocations to teaching events and their availability to teach should be provided by their School. By using web browsers for data input, the task of entering the information from paper forms submitted can be removed.

Audio-Visual

SUMS’ experience shows that the people with the most current knowledge of the teaching rooms and the equipment they contain are invariably the audio-visual staff. Ideally they should use the timetabling system to ensure that the room data and equipment associated with the rooms is kept up to date.

Timetable

There are a variety of approaches to timetabling. Historically timetables have been fixed, rolled over from one year to the next and then modified to reflect any course changes. Timetabling software can be used to replicate this process. For a newcomer to computerised timetabling, taking this proven route represents a safe way to learn new software and processes whilst producing a working timetable. It also helps reduce implementation time and minimises the impact of change on teaching staff. However, this approach will not find the optimal timetable, which the timetabling software can do if it is allowed to determine the optimum rooms and times for teaching events.

Ideally timetables should be allowed to float and should be recalculated every year from scratch in order to achieve the optimum solution. In reality a proportion of the timetable is often fixed each year and rolled forward to the next year. This practice allows the institution to take into account constraints

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Because the roll-forward of constrained events compromises optimal performance, its use should be kept to a minimum and the appropriateness of the roll-forward tested using the software’s "what-if" facilities. Finding the right balance between fixed and floating teaching events is key to good timetabling. Ideally timetabling is centralised. An argument can be made for School or Faculty timetabling if an institution is very large and the curriculum complex. Departmental timetabling is not space-efficient and will not form a sufficient part of someone’s role to ensure that good practice is adopted and continually improved.

Large Lecture Theatres

For many institutions the most constrained resource will be large lecture theatres (with greater than 100 seats) and the accommodation of large teaching groups. A good strategy is to allocate these first. If they are very stable, roll forward the lecture events from the previous year for continuity. If academic units are not used to the auto-allocation of rooms then hold a “large lecture theatre” meeting to discuss any necessary changes and ensure that their needs are accommodated.

Joint Honours Students

Ideally the timetabling system should have sufficient information concerning modules and students so that it can produce a clash-free timetable by rearranging teaching events. Practically where this information is not available to the timetabling system, it can be necessary to timetable joint honours classes early in the process and then fix them to ensure that the timetable remains clash-free. Unfortunately this can lead to poor optimisation as other teaching events have to be moved to accommodate what may be a small number of students.

Student Placements (e.g. Nurses, Teachers)

Placement patterns vary from institution to institution, but in all cases present an added complication to timetabling because the placements are fixed and teaching must move to accommodate them. It is quite common for Schools of Nursing and Medicine to timetable independently from their institution. Where this is allowed, it is essential to ensure that teaching rooms are returned to the pool once the timetable has been fixed to allow other users to make use of any remaining room availability.

Part-Time Postgraduate Students

Courses for part-time postgraduate students are often fixed for a particular day of the week, but are usually less problematic to timetable than placement students because the class size is invariably smaller.

Specialist Teaching Space (e.g. Laboratories)

Specialist teaching space is often timetabled locally, when this occurs this local timetable must be transferred electronically to the central copy of the master timetable so that complete personal timetables can be constructed and clash-testing performed.

Seminar Groups

The preferred approach is to allocate students to teaching groups because it ensures clash-free timetables and comprehensive personal timetables to be created centrally.

Conferences

There is specialist conference software on the market that will better meet the needs of an institution’s conference business than timetabling software. It is common practice to state times to the conference office when they can reasonably expect the Estate to be free of teaching and be able to book rooms for conferences. This is getting less clear-cut, with some courses such as Nursing not taught to the standard academic year. Also increasing numbers of part-time/continuing education students are cutting into the evening/weekend slots. Ideally the conference system integrates with the timetabling system. Where conference bookings are not computerised, the conference office should have at least visibility and preferably some access to the timetabling system.

Manage Changes

As a university improves its timetabling process, it starts to look at change management. Whilst the timetabling process is by nature iterative, there comes a point in the timetabling process (August –

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© SUMS 2015 Version Final Page 13 September) where there needs to be some discipline enforced so that at this late stage only strictly necessary changes are made. Good practice is to set up a formal change management process for these last critical months whereby change requests need to be signed off by senior academic managers.

Publish

Student Timetables

Good practice is to publish personal timetables for students both on the web and to a student’s mobile phone with notification of changes to the timetable. This requires that ALL the timetable information is available in one place including placement information, laboratory timetables and seminar group allocations.

Course Timetables

Where there is little choice given to the student in following a course it may be acceptable to merely publish the timetable at the course level e.g. medical programmes. The software allows a wide variety of different views onto timetable data and web views should allow the user to select their preferred timetable type.

Staff Timetables

It is good practice to publish personal staff timetables on the web. The institution’s policy on information generally determines whether the information is publicly available over the internet or secured within the institution. It is generally good practice to make all information available over the web and only secure it if there is a good reason.

Room Timetables

Some institutions print out weekly room timetables and fix these to the door of each teaching room. Strictly speaking this should not be necessary, but it can be invaluable when two classes turn up for the same room at the same time and the paper timetable can be used as the arbiter. Room timetables should also be published on the web and on digital displays to help students and aid support staff servicing teaching rooms.

Ad-hoc Room Booking

Room allocation should normally be carried out as an integral part of the timetabling process so that all resources can be matched to produce a workable timetable. However, there are inevitably changes that occur even to the best-laid plans and there will be a host of meetings, research events, guest speakers that require bookings made in the term in which they occur. These should be accommodated through a web room booking facility open to all staff and possibly students as well, depending on the availability of space.

In addition to being able to view room availability over the web and being able to reserve it, room pictures, layouts and AV facilities of all available rooms should also be viewable over the web.

7. Monitor Teaching Space Use

Some of the software commonly used has very sophisticated reporting capabilities which are often underused, because timetabling staff have not received the necessary training. Universities typically use spreadsheets to manipulate and report space survey results, whereas there are opportunities to use timetabling software to support the whole survey process from setting up the room survey sheets to comparing booked and surveyed data.

Space Survey

It is good practice to annually conduct a space survey until such point as utilisation has been maximised and frequency can be decreased. The space survey is a systematic review of use of the teaching room stock over a full working week. It surveys as a minimum all pooled rooms but ideally should apply to all teaching rooms. Students are often used to carry these out. As a minimum the surveyor should note whether the room is occupied or not. Ideally they should also count those present or, for larger institutions note what fraction of the room is occupied.

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© SUMS 2015 Version Final Page 14 Historically there is a lot of transcription from paper recording sheets to spreadsheets required and then further work to compare this data with the timetable. Portable logging devices can be used.

Alternatively if the university has a comprehensive attendance monitoring policy and is electronically collecting data to support this, then this data could be anonymised and used to provide aggregated space use data.

There should be wide circulation of the resulting space survey report with clear conclusions and recommendations made to the appropriate committee.

8. People

The Space Manager

A good space manager is both policeman and facilitator and getting the balance right can be difficult. When acting as policeman be as transparent as possible and show the numbers and benchmarks which indicate poor use of space. As a space facilitator the key is to listen very carefully to space requests so that all options for fulfilling the request are investigated.

The space manager and the timetabler should work together even if they are located in different departments with the space manager often in Estates and the timetabler in Registry.

The Timetabler

In SUMS’ experience it is critical when recruiting a timetabler that the applicant has the right mindset. They are more likely to be successful if they have prior experience or show an aptitude for logical problem-solving. Not every administrator will take to timetabling.

Given the importance of the central Timetabling Office to the smooth running of the institution and the small number of staff who are involved, particular attention must be paid to ensuring service cover and continuity. To ensure service cover:

 Explore the scope for converging similar or adjacent functions such as teaching timetable and examinations timetabling offices or module catalogue maintenance and timetabling

 Ensure that a School/Faculty timetabler has had sufficient visibility of the central role so that they can provide cover.

To retain service continuity:

 Enhance the job description as the employee grows in experience

 Ensure that there is a junior or a faculty administrator who can move up to the post if necessary  Document processes and ensure there is a calendar of events. Given that institutions will

inevitably have staff turnover in the Timetabling Office, it is important to induct new staff well so that they reach proficiency very quickly because the annual timetabling process continues regardless

 Ensure that they learn not only the procedures of the office, but are taken around the campus so that they are familiar with it and can put faces to email addresses. Timetablers need to feel part of the wider institution community and are better received by School administrators if they see them occasionally

 Have an overlapping period where incoming and outgoing staff work together so that local practices can be explained

 Avoid using outgoing staff to train the incoming staff in the timetabling software. In SUMS’ experience staff trained “on the job” can pick up bad practices

 Send new staff on vendor training to acquire software skills incorporating the latest techniques. It is equally important that existing staff learn their software skills from the vendor, and keep up to date with the latest software releases and new functionality.

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The Organisation

All timetabling has a central timetabling function and some aspect of devolved data collection. Responsibility for the central aspect typically sits either with Registry or Estates.

Registry vs. Estates

If located in Estates there may well be a better working relationship with the space manager, whereas if located in Registry there is an opportunity to achieve tighter integration with Registry systems. With the move to personal timetables this latter point has seen more timetablers move across into Registry. Currently about two thirds of SUMS Members locate it in Registry, with a third still in Estates

.

Where it is located in Registry it can be:

 A standalone unit reporting to the Academic Registrar  Part of the student systems office

 Combined with exams.

Central vs. Devolved

The most significant influence on performance is the degree to which timetabling is centralised. As stated earlier, central space allocation leads to improved space use. Therefore centralisation of timetabling has to be a goal for every institution. This does not preclude departmental input of staff teaching availability or local timetabling of specialist rooms such as laboratories. It also does not preclude a transitional step of Faculty timetabling as a precursor to fully central timetabling or indeed at the larger institutions a need to retain Faculty timetabling. Each institution must decide how this fits with the rest of their administrative structure.

There is a danger in leaving timetabling at the departmental level in that the software is complex and it needs to be a significant part of someone's job for them to become comfortable with it. If it is only a small part of their job, they are unlikely to engage with the full functionality of it.

9. Systems

Space Database Software

This is typically part of an integrated Estates management system, but some universities are still using in-house developed databases. There is a wide variety of facilities management software to choose from and the software in use extends into other sectors. The statement of requirement should cover all the Estates services you wish to include. The particular requirements for a space database have been produced by SUMS for our Members to assist the system selection process.

Timetabling Software

Within the SUMS membership two software vendors dominate; these are:  Scientia with their Syllabus Plus package

 Serco with their Facility CMIS package.

CELCAT, which is the FE market leading software, does have some penetration in the HE market but does not have the user groups of the market leaders or the HE sector focus.

Historically it has been very difficult for new entrants to gain a foothold in the small niche market of university timetabling software. However, with the advent of cloud technology and “software-as-a- service” this may be about to change. Certainly barriers to entry have been lowered.

It is important that your system meets your specific needs. You should identify your criteria for choice and select against these criteria. Statements of requirement have been produced by SUMS for our Members to assist the system selection process.

A key consideration when drawing up a statement of requirement is whether you are looking for both exams and lecture timetabling functionality or just one or the other. (Exams timetabling has not been covered in this Guide).

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© SUMS 2015 Version Final Page 16 Given the need to both devolve certain timetabling functionality to Schools and the need to integrate the software with other systems, it is imperative that the systems department is involved in any software choices or upgrades. System issues to cover are:

 Can the system work with the institution’s database standard?  How will the system fit with the institution’s portal standard/strategy?

 How many people does the institution intend to have using the software directly and how many require some sort of browser access?

 How well does the system integrate with student information systems and can the vendor provide a reference site where the systems can be seen working together?

 Is the university developing a cloud strategy for systems and should this be a criteria for systems choice?

 How much support do you want to buy with the system?

Systems Integration

Increasingly timetabling data needs to integrate with a variety of other services and the data transfers can be large and frequent. This is usually not a problem if adequately addressed when implementing adjacent systems such as student attendance monitoring, but can be problematic if the integration was not properly addressed at the outset. The following picture shows how timetabling now finds itself as a core data source for other systems.

Figure 2: SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

The recording of lectures has increased significantly with the intent of supporting students better in their studies rather than replacing the physical lecture. Early implementations have not shown any drop-off in attendance in physical lectures. It is possible to automate the loading of the lecture recording to the VLE based on timetable data.

TIMETABLE DATA PAYROLL STUDENT RECORD STUDENT ATTENDANCE Lecture Recording KIS Personal Timetables Workload Allocation Model

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© SUMS 2015 Version Final Page 17 Student attendance monitoring has also been on the increase with the desire to better support the student by detecting early non-engagement so that the university can then intervene and try to support the student before drop-out. Timetabling data can provide class registers or can be connected to an electronic student logging system to automate attendance monitoring. The key is not to underestimate the amount of data needed to be integrated if the university policy is to monitor student attendance at all teaching events for all students.

KIS stands for Key Information Sets and as part of this contact hours per course are publicly published to potential students. Only a few universities currently take this information from the timetabling system with the majority relying on programme specifications. Strictly speaking the timetabling system is the more accurate data source.

Finally, workload allocation models should integrate with timetabling systems. This is rare currently but again should be considered in the ideal world.

10. Teaching Space

Changes in teaching styles changes teaching space design. The key is to keep space flexible and multi-use. This may in turn require more room porters who are prepared to change room configurations and a university has to decide whether to invest in such a service. This service can always be staffed by students.

Whilst the theory is that lecture theatres are no longer required it will be awhile before actual teaching practice catches up with the emerging theories of “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage.” A further problem is that lecture theatres do make very efficient use of space compared to classrooms set up for problem-based learning.

It is not just the central space that is changing, but specialist laboratory space is being integrated and redesigned for greater efficiency at many universities (ref, a Loughborough University report entitled “Laboratories for the 21st century in STEM Higher Education”).

11. Timeline

Increasingly the student population is a working population even if the work is only part-time. In this context students want to receive their timetables for the next academic year earlier so that they can plan their work hours.

It is only possible to push timetable production earlier in the year, if curriculum approval and student module choice occur in a timely fashion, as these processes are necessary data providers for the timetabling process.

It is good practice not only for the key dates for timetabling preparation to be published but also the key dates associated with these other student processes. It is important that published timelines are adhered to, otherwise it defeats the purpose and the result is a large number of last minute changes. An example of good practice can be found here:

GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE TEACHING SPACE MANAGEMENT

GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE

TEACHING SPACE MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.

Introduction

2.

Background

3.

Drivers

4.

Policy

5.

Teaching Space Planning

6.

The Timetabling Process

7.

Monitor Teaching Space Use

8.

People

.

9.

Systems

10.

Teaching Space

11.

Timeline