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SIS 2000+ Student Loader

Introduction 

The Student Loader mass-schedules students into course sections in the Master Schedule, attempting to satisfy the maximum number of course requests with the minimum amount of scheduling conflicts and, at the same time, comply with various user-defined scheduling parameters, rules and options such as demographic distribution, course rules, teams, class size, etc.

The Loader uses a sophisticated algorithm to run its scheduling sessions. It is a tremendous tool for creating schedules that, when attempted by hand in the past, were very difficult to process and control. Computers have the ability to do more, and provide a sophisticated approach. Most importantly, the program allows the user to create student schedules that reflect priorities.

After the first session is run, various scheduling reports will be available for analysis. By analyzing the data reported from the first session, schedules can be further optimized through a series of adjustments and compromises and then rerunning the Loader.

The end product of the Student Loader process is printed schedules for every student (Student Schedule Report) and a Class Roster for every course section.
 

Prerequisites:
There are two main prerequisites that must be accomplished before running the Loader process:

1. Define and enter a Master Schedule into the SIS 2000+ system via the Master Schedule Editor program.
2. Build course request files in the Course Request Editor for every student to be scheduled.

Screen Layout

From the Scheduling Menu, click on the Loader icon button. The initial Student Loader interface is called the "main request form" and is similar to a report interface. There are three tabs (information screens) and a several sub-screens and dialogs within those screens. Before running an automatic scheduling session (the Load command), scheduling parameters are set in the 'Options' screen and sub-screens, student groups to be scheduled are selected in the 'Select' screen, and report sorting order is defined in the 'Sort' screen.

• 'Options' screen

See illustration above (Fig. 1) This tab contains basic options in the front, such as Title, Track, and Students to Load.


Fig. 1
 

• Loader Options -

A sub-screen of the Options tab, activated by the Loader Options command button. Here is where more advanced scheduling parameters are defined (Fig. 2).


Fig. 2
 

• Define Demographic Balance dialog -

This dialog (Fig. 3) is a derivative of the Loader Options screen above. It allows the user to specify which demographic field values should be balanced across all available sections of a course and their relative priorities.


Fig. 3
 

• 'Select' screen

The Student Loader schedules only one track at a time. All students in the track with course requests will be processed by a Student Loader session unless specific criteria are specified in the Select screen. Within a track are the system-defined student categories of Grade, Service, Gender, Ethnicity, and Group. Within each one of these categories, criteria can be defined to narrow down the type of student to be scheduled. For instance, a specific grade level or gender could be specified, or a combination of both.


Fig. 4
 

• Sort screen

The Student Loader will issue a simple proprietary report in the form of a list of student names that are being scheduled per session, per Select criteria. This report is executed by the Preview command button at the bottom of the main screen. The sorting order of the list, such as primary, secondary and tertiary sort fields, ascending or descending, can be defined in the Sort screen (Fig. 5). Extra fields can be added via the Add command button.


Fig. 5
 
 

The Load Command is the main process of the Student Loader. After all options and parameters are defined, this command executes an automatic scheduling session. A Process Control dialog opens (Fig. 6), allowing further options of printing and running the process.

Fig. 6
 

Reports

Besides the proprietary scheduling report issued from the Preview command within the application, the Loader generates data for several other more advanced and highly customizable schedule reports. Some of the reports are used during the scheduling process. Other reports are printed after scheduling is finished. A list menu (Fig. 7) of the available reports is accessed by clicking on Reports icon button within the Schedule Menu.

Fig. 7