Verify and Complete Course Information
If you use the auto-generate course information function, the system enters the following information for each course:
- Number of sections offered
- Valid terms
- Terms per year
- Periods per meeting
- Periods per cycle
- Frequency
- Is This Course a Lab
- Lab Periods per meeting
- Lab Frequency
- Maximum enrollment
- Schedule this course
- Build type
- Load priority
- Load type
- Balance priority
Verify and adjust these values. Then, enter course scheduling preferences for each course on the Course Information page.
- On the start page, choose PowerScheduler under Applications in the main menu. The Scheduling page appears.
- Under Resources, choose Courses from the PowerScheduler menu. The Courses page appears.
- Click the name of the course you want to work with from the courses menu.
- Do one of the following:
- Choose Preferences from the pop-up menu.
- Click the Preferences tab.
- Select either the Allow Student Repeats in the Same Term or Allow Student Repeats in Different Terms checkbox.
Use the following table to adjust any values in the Load Options section of the page:
Field
Description
Load Priority
Enter a numerical value of 1 to 99 (1 being the highest priority) to prioritize in which course the system should schedule a student when a conflict between two of the student's requests arises. You can enter the same load priority number for several courses. For example, enter a load priority of 10 for all academic courses to ensure that students are loaded into these courses first, 20 for academic electives, and 30 for non-academic electives.
Note: If this course has a Section Link constraint associated with it, you may want to give it the highest load priority to prevent the section link from being broken.
Load Type
Choose from the pop-up menu whether this is an academic, elective, or alternate course. The system uses this classification to balance the types of courses in which the student is scheduled during a schedule term.
For example, if your school's scheduling terms are semesters, the system does not schedule the student in all elective courses the first semester and all academic courses the second semester.
Balance Priority
Use this pop-up menu to set a secondary priority for the course when loading student schedules. The primary priority is determined by the Load Priority field.
The following settings create an additional priority. For example, if you choose Grade from the pop-up menu, the system not only attempts to keep an equal number of students in each section, but also an equal number from all grade levels. The default setting for loading students into the master schedule is Section. Use the pop-up menu to choose one of the following options to ensure a balance of students in each section (optional):
- Section: When loading students into sections, the system always attempts to keep an even number of students among sections.
- Gender: Balanced number of students by gender within each section.
- Grade: Balanced number of students from each grade level within each section.
- EthnicCode: Balanced number of students with different ethnic codes within each section.
- House: Balanced number of members from each house within each section.
Note: In order to balance by genders other than male and female, you will need to use the server-side engine loader (rather than the client-side scheduling engine), which optimizes processing for faster and better results.
Use Pre-Established Teams
Select the checkbox if you want the system to reference teams when scheduling students into this course.
Close Section After Max
Select the checkbox if you want the system to stop scheduling students in a section of this course after the enrollment reaches the number you defined in the Maximum Enrollment field.
Use Section Types
Select the checkbox if you want the system to schedule the course according to section types.
- Click Submit. The Changes Recorded page appears.