Alternate Scheduler

The Alternate Scheduler program assigns a student to an alternate teacher for each class period in a semester or year.
The student reports to an alternate teacher when the original teacher is absent.
The student has a regular “Class Schedule” and an “Alternate Schedule” to be used if a teacher on the regular schedule is absent.

Overview Notes About the Alternate Scheduler

1. Note: The user should "Initialize" the Master Schedule load counts prior to running this program to ensure better teacher load balancing. The directions for "Initializing" a Master Schedule can be found by clicking on the link below:
   • Initializing the Master Schedule#The true master schedule load counts will NOT be changed, because the schedules created by this program do not affect the true WebPams scheduling system.
2. Only Master Schedule sections with a Max Seat Count greater than zero will be available for use in this program.
3. A complete alternate schedule will be created for all selected students. The program will read in all master schedule records. Each student will be assigned to a different teacher for each class period and semester.
4. Balancing the Alternate Teacher Loads:
   • The teacher the student will be scheduled to will be a different teacher than the teacher the student is currently scheduled to for the semester and class period. Priority is given to classes with the the lowest current load count for the semester and class period scheduling.
     1. The user should select the option to "allow overloads". Overloading the sections will ensure that all students are scheduled.
     2. If the master schedule contains some sections with low max values (max seats for the room), and "overload" is not used, the program may not be able to schedule all of the students to an alternate teacher because there may not be enough seats to schedule all of the students.
   • Overloading the sections will help balance the load for the teachers, allowing for more students to be alternately scheduled. The students will be better distributed to the sections with the overload option selected.
5. Master schedules which have only one section per class period, for a semester, for a teacher, will have better results running this program since the loads can be balanced for each teacher. If a teacher does have more than one class per period, then you may want to consider only sending alternates to one of the sections and indicate that the other sections do not receive alternate students.

Video How-to

Alternate Scheduler video

How-to

1. Note: The user should "Initialize" the Master Schedule load counts prior to running this program to ensure better teacher load balancing. The directions for "Initializing" a Master Schedule can be found by clicking on the link below:
   • Initializing the Master Schedule