Academic Departments: Using the Registrar’s Sequence Distribution template

Overview

The Registrar's Sequence Distribution template is a tool to analyze the extent to which all time sequences are utilized by each department. Offering courses at a variety of times allows more flexibility for students and allows the university classroom space to be used most efficiently.

The template is meant to be used only to analyze daytime sequences and should exclude any courses that are evening and weekend courses, online courses. or courses that meet in departmental spaces (such as labs) which are not managed by the Registrar’s Office 

Helpful Tips

  • If there are multiple sections of the same course that have combined meetings, list the meeting one time on your sequence distribution 

  • If there are courses that meet one day a week and may be paired up with another section that meets on another day, list them together on one line. Example: if a course with a 4th hour recitation meets on Mondays at 8:30-9:20, and another section has a Wednesday at 8:30-9:20, list them together on one line so theoretically they are considered only once for sequence distribution.

  • The Average number of courses is the total number of courses divided by the 14-day time sequences. You should not have more courses in each time sequence than the average.  Average = (Sum of all values) / (Total count of values).

      MWF 8:30 0   TR 8:30 0
      MWF 9:35 0   TR 10:00 0
      MWF 10:40 0   TR 11:30 0
      MWF 11:45 0   TR 1:00 0
      MWF 12:50 0   TR 2:30 0
      MW/F 1:55 0   TR 4:00 0
      MW   3:20 0      
      MW   4:45 0      

Instructions

Step 1: In your Course Offering, Save As a new document (so you don’t impact your original course offering) and call it Sequence Distribution 

Step 2: Remove any evening or weekend courses by Day of the week and time using the standard time sequence PDF as a guide 

Step 3: Remove any non in-person courses (online, by arrangement, abroad). The rest of the list should be only in-person, daytime courses.

Step 4: Delete all the columns in your Excel sheet, except for: 

  • Subject 

  • Course 

  • Section 

  • Title 

  • Maximum 

  • M – F (day of the week) 

  • Start 

  • End 

Step 5: When only those columns are left in your excel, copy them over to Columns A – L in the template for the formula in Columns O – AE to calculate,

Step 6: Fill in the summary on tab 2 

Step 7: Review Column M to see if there are any courses with the number “2 or above” in them. This means the course covers 2 or more time sequences. Review for errors. 

Step 8: Review the summary on tab 2 to see the sequence distribution of courses.

Step 9: Save the changes to the new document and return it to Academic Scheduling.

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