This lesson covers how to use the Course Tally to determine how many sections of each course you would like to offer in the upcoming school year, as well as how to create those sections.
The Course Tally can be used ...
1) As a time saver to create “dummy” sections in bulk (without teachers and without periods) for all the courses you will be offering in the upcoming school year. The Course Tally page will recommend the number of sections that you should offer based on the number of requests and maximum capacity for each course (i.e., based on criteria you established while following previous steps/lessons).
2) The Course Tally can also act as a report to display the number of requests for each course, the number of sections that have been created for each course, and the average number of seats filled for each section.
NOTE: Before you use the Course Tally, you must complete the following ..
- Set student Max Totals for a class on Course Details
- Input Student Course Requests
- Set the School Calendar
Before creating your draft schedule, it is important to use the “Course Request Tally” report data to ensure there is an alignment of sections to overall site budgets (FTE allotment, LCAP, etc.). Please make sure students are over/under enrolled based on teacher/student ratios (i.e., 35:1). This will be important to note when running the draft master schedule and making the schedule live.
Where to Start
1. You must be logged in under the school year and site for which you are impacting scheduling. Confirm in the Control Panel that you are logged in under the upcoming school year.
2. If you are not, use the Change Student Set / Site in the Control Panel to log in under the upcoming school year.
Click the Scheduling tab. Under Draft Schedule Mgmt, click Course Tally.
View and Adjust Course Tally
Warning: If you choose to re-run the course tally after you have already placed sections on the board you have no control over which sections will be deleted if the number of sections for a course is lowered from the initial creation. It is advised that under normal circumstances that you not make changes to this page if you have already assigned periods and/or teachers to the sections in your master schedule (i.e., do not follow this lesson's remaining directions if you have already completed the next lesson/step or any after it). Changes here should only be used to create/remove sections as a first step toward creating the master schedule. If you need to add/remove sections later in the master scheduling process, please use the Edit Draft Schedule Sections function covered in previous lessons/steps.
Notice that course names are featured at the bottom of the page. However, you may opt to use the Department Filter function to narrow down the list of courses you are viewing below.
The Course Tally provides a wealth of information and options:
1. Click on blue arrow next to the Course ID to "drill down" to a list of all the students who requested the course, along with an account of their grade levels. From there you will be able to click on any of those students' names to adjust their course requests, if necessary.
2. Wherever you see application icons (for Excel .xls, Adobe Reader .pdf, Text, or .xml), it means you can download the report into that format by merely clicking the desired icon.
3. Each course displays the number of course requests for each grade level and for each term. For example, in the area circled above (next to the large, blue 3) I can see that 306 students in grade 9 requested the Art Portfolio course for Term 1, 0 students in grades 10 and 11 requested it for Term 1, and 6 students in grade 12 requested it for Term 1.
4. The #T column provides the overall total number of requests for each course.
5. The #S column provides the number of sections that the system suggests for each course. This is based on the course capacity (minimum capacity, maximum capacity, and/or average capacity) that you set up earlier while following the "STEP 3 (District): Manage Course Catalog" lesson. Note that the system will always round up in its suggestion. For example, if you set a course's maximum capacity at 30 and there are 31 requests for the course, the system will suggest that you offer 2 sections. If you see two numbers in this area, as shown above, it is because the course is defined as a 1-term course (the system thus has to count - and displays - requests separately for each term, as is shown above).
6. The #N column provides the number of sections you are offering. The first time you view the course tally you will see 0s in this column so that you give each section's number thorough consideration. Remember: Do not make any changes here if you have already assigned periods and/or teachers to the sections in your master schedule (i.e., do not follow this lesson's remaining directions if you have already completed the next lesson/step or any after it). Changes here should only be used to create/destroy sections as a first step toward creating the master schedule. If you need to add/remove sections later in the master scheduling process, please use the Edit Draft Schedule Sections function covered in previous lessons/steps.
If you do make any changes, click Save/Delete Sections at the bottom of the page to complete the process
7. After you have saved (as noted directly above) any changes to the #N column, the #A will provide the average number of students who will be enrolled in each section. You may continue to make changes to the #N column numbers or to students' course requests in order to see these #A numbers change.
Alternate Course Request Note: Course Tally does not count the alternate course. It only counts the primary request.
Next Steps
Proceed to the next lesson in this manual for support with the next step.