Scheduling Spotlight: Course Rules

Hi again! Now that we’ve looked at the Course tab, Restrictions 1 tab, and Restrictions 2 tab on course records, we’re ready to discuss the Rules tab.

The Rules tab is important for both automated and manual scheduling. Why? This is where you tell the program how courses relate to each other. To do this, you can assign scheduling rules and define prerequisites.

1 – Assigning Scheduling Rules
A scheduling rule defines a relationship between courses in the master schedule and/or student schedules. For example, you can define courses that must be taken at the same time (aka corequisites), such as Biology and Biology Lab.

If you select the Use rule when enrolling students checkbox on the scheduling rule in Configuration (see below), the rule streamlines course request assignment. When you enter a student request for one of the corequisites in Scheduling, the program will ask if you want to add a request for the other corequisite.

You can define as many scheduling rules as you need to match your scheduling process. For example:

• You can identify courses that need to be paired across terms, such as Health and Phys Ed.
  
• You can link together core courses so each student is enrolled in the corresponding class section (such as 01, 02, or 03, etc.) of each course.

For more information about defining scheduling rules, review How to create scheduling rules such as corequisites and schedule 2 single term courses across terms (Piggybacking across terms) and add them to courses in Knowledgebase.

2 – Defining Prerequisites
In addition to adding scheduling rules on the Rules tab, you can list course prerequisites. For example, you can require students to take Spanish I before they take Spanish II. Of course, you can manually override a prerequisite if necessary, such as when a student tests out of Spanish I.

Note: You can define an OR formula or an AND formula for prerequisites. In the example above, I am telling the program that students must either have an  enrollment for SPAN I (a Standard course offered at my school) OR a grade of B or higher in Spanish 1, which is a Transfer course.

The reason I didn’t require a specific grade in the course offered at my school is that we schedule students for the upcoming year before the current year has ended, so final grades aren’t entered yet.

For more information about identifying prerequisites, review How to define prerequisites in Knowledgebase. 

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