Body
Description
This article provides a description of the Coursedog scheduling cycle and how it is divided into phases that help balance departmental flexibility with schedule accuracy, room optimization, and student planning. Understanding what happens in each phase will help departments know when they can make changes and when schedules become more tightly controlled.
Getting Started
Phase 0: Admin Review
Purpose
The Registrar's Office prepares the scheduling environment before departments begin building the schedule.
Who Is Working?
Department Responsibilities
Phase 1: Open Scheduling (Call for Courses)
Purpose
Departments build and review their schedules for the upcoming term. This is the phase with the greatest flexibility. academic departments may add, edit, and delete course sections during this phase to be submitted to the Registrar for Validation before course and room scheduling is published.
What Departments Can Do
✅ Add sections
✅ Cancel sections
✅ Assign instructors
✅ Adjust meeting patterns and times
✅ Update enrollment capacities
✅ Request rooms
✅ Modify attributes and restrictions
Department Focus
Phase 2: Registrar Validation
Purpose
The Registrar's Office reviews submitted schedules to ensure compliance with scheduling policies, meeting patterns, rooming guidelines, sequence distribution, and other institutional requirements.
Who Is Working?
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Registrar's Office
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Academic Scheduling
Department Responsibilities
What Departments Can Do
❌ Direct schedule edits are not permitted.
Key takeaway: Think of Phase 2 as a temporary blackout period while schedules are reviewed.
Phase 3: Schedule Cleanup & Sign-Off
Purpose
Departments and Academic Scheduling work together to resolve issues identified during validation and prepare the schedule for publication. Secondly, it’s the departments opportunity to refine what was initially submitted during Phase 1 before registration and advising kicks off. This phase ends with a one week Maintenance and System Lockdown to prepare for registration.
What Departments Can Do
⚠️ Changes may be allowed through an approval workflow.
⚠️ Revisions should be limited to items identified during validation.
Department Focus
Key takeaway: This phase is for refinement, not rebuilding the schedule.
Phase 4: Schedule Live
Purpose
The class schedule is published and available for student planning and registration. This is the most restrictive phase as the Registrar’s department will evaluate any section change request to evaluate it’s impact on the advising and registration process.
What Departments Can Do
✅ Limited updates such as certain instructor or enrollment changes
⚠️ Significant changes, including cancellations, new sections, room changes, and meeting pattern changes, require formal approval processes.
Department Focus
Key Takeaway: Once students are planning and registering, every change affects the student experience.
Phase 5: Closed / Archived
Purpose
The scheduling cycle for the term is complete.
What Departments Can Do
❌ No schedule edits are permitted.
Department Focus
Key takeaway: The term is locked and archived.