Scheduling

Sessions

General scheduling guide:

  1. Block off holidays and midterm/reading break days using full day sessions with the holiday/break label.
  2. Choose a generic schedule (i.e. 11am-8pm Mon-Sat), then use the bulk add sessions tool in PT to add it for the entire term.
    • Also add viewing sessions in their own room (i.e. ICCS 008) and keep separate from exams using a viewing label.
    • Also add orientation sessions to the first couple weeks, again in their own room and separate using an orientation label. Orientation sessions should be 15 minutes long, with four of them per hour. These are intended to help students who are new to the CBTF and proctors who are new to proctoring understand the process.
    • Schedule strict-scheduled exams with self-reserve disabled and 0 capacity. Use a label to indicate that they are strict-scheduled and which course they are for.
  3. Use the predict usage button to see which days and times commonly need more sessions, then add sessions to cover them.
  4. If there are still major issues, try to resolve them. Otherwise, for minor issues, wait until closer to or after the add/drop deadline as enrolment tends to go down, making it easier to handle these issues.
  5. In general, keep ICCS 008 sessions closed (self-reserve disabled) until you see which ICCS 014 sessions are full, then open those ICCS 008 sessions to relieve pressure and keep availability high for students.

Tips from Previous Terms

  • In the summer, weekend sessions are not popular. Don’t schedule them unless an exam has a window that ends on the weekend.

Proctors

General proctor scheduling guide for the first week:

  1. Add shifts to deputy that cover all sessions
    • Split shifts into 2-3 hours each.
    • Must have one proctor in each open room.
    • If only one room is in use, add a second proctor to that room.
    • If two rooms are in use, add a floating proctor to go between rooms.
    • If there are not enough proctor hours to do this ideal version, resort to just one proctor per room, but for any sessions that are more than half full, we should have two proctors.
    • Add training shifts that happen at the same time as experienced proctor shifts and assign new proctors to them so they can shadow and learn.
  2. For the first week, use auto scheduler and double check that it makes sense.
    • Only one shift per day per proctor.
    • No proctor over the weekly limit.
    • No proctors underscheduled.
    • No new proctors with shifts before a training shift.

General proctor scheduling guide for following weeks:

  1. Copy the schedule from the previous week.
  2. Adjust the shifts to match any differences in sessions. This is typically easiest by copying and pasting shifts rather than creating new shifts as the copy/paste method retains the correct settings.
  3. Try to keep proctors assigned to consistent shifts each week. This will not always be possible, but do your best.

Tips:

  • Always make sure to publish shifts after you are done editing them!
  • Typically, a few proctors will decline shifts for each week. Wait until most proctors have confirmed their shifts before re-scheduling to cover the declined shifts, so that you don’t have to re-schedule many times.

Labels

Here are some commonly needed labels to make at the start of the term:

  • Holiday/break
  • Viewing
  • Orientation
  • One label for each strict-scheduled exam to communicate to proctors which course is in that session