Introduction

The “Summary of Course Requests” is a scheduling resource that has been designed to help with:

• Gauging student interest in courses offered for the upcoming school year
• Identifying how many sections should be offered - or could be offered - for each course for the upcoming year
• Providing data to help make decisions about Teacher load allocations for the upcoming year

After reviewing this document, you will know how to:

• Find and run the “Summary of Course Requests”
• Understand the meaning of the various columns contained in the report
• Adjust report variables, filters and settings to assist with making better scheduling decisions

Part 1: Running the Report

1. Go to Start Page > SQL Reports > Scheduling Phase 3 TRACK AND ANALYZE > 4.0 Summary of Course Requests

2. On the Run sqlReport page, specify the year you would like to query. For example, type “2019” or “2020” etc in the Scheduling Year field provided, then click Submit:

Part 2: Understanding the Report

The “Summary of Course Requests” has various columns some of which will be pre-populated with existing scheduling data. Other columns can be adjusted manually as will be explained in Part 3 of this document. Please note the following information about each of the displayed columns (listed in column order from left to right):

Part 3: Using the Report

As mentioned in Part 2 of this document, most of the data in the report is pre-populated with scheduling information gathered from other areas in PowerSchool. Two of the columns however, have been purposely left blank for the Scheduling Committee to review and confirm. These columns are: “Targ. # Sections” and “# Sections Assigned”. Please follow the instructions below to review and confirm the data that should appear in these columns.

Note: If most of the data in the “Section Max.” column or the “Sugg. # Sections” column is set to zero, please contact the EdTech team, and ask them to run the “Auto-Fill Course Information” function in PowerScheduler before you get started with your Committee Review.

Updating the “Targ. # Sections” Column

As mentioned in Part 2 of this document, this column displays the “target” or recommended number of sections that should be available for the course as determined by the Scheduling Committee.

Usually this number should be equal to the number in the Sugg. # Sections column. However, in some cases, the Scheduling Committee may have some additional information about a course that would require the school to either increase the number of sections or decrease the number of sections. For example, the school may have recently completed some additional marketing for a new Tourism class and have had feedback that they will receive more requests for that class over the next few weeks. In this case, the Sugg. # Sections may be listed as “1”, but the Scheduling Committee has decided to list the Targ. # Sections as “2”. To update the Targ. # Sections, please do the following:

1. Click the Edit Course button.

2. The Course Information page will open in a new tab. On the Course Information page, in the Preferences tab, scroll down to the page section named: Sections Defined and enter the “Target Number of Sections to Offer” in the field provided:

3. Once you have entered the correct number of sections to offer (as determined by the Scheduling Committee), scroll down to the end of the form and click the Submit button:

Note: The Course Information page has a large number of fields that can be viewed and/or modified. Please only adjust the other fields on the form if you have been trained properly about using this form and understand exactly what you are doing. Please contact the EdTech team for any questions you might have about the other fields on this form.

4. Once you have submitted the form, close the Course Information tab:

5. Next, navigate back to the Summary of Course Requests tab and then click the Refresh button (or hit F5) to refresh the data on the page. You should notice that the Targ. # Sections has been updated. Repeat this process for every Course:

Updating the “# Sections Assigned” Column

As mentioned in Part 2 of this document, this column displays the actual number of sections (classes) that have been assigned to a teacher for the course.

This column should be left blank until the Scheduling Committee have met together to discuss and assign the Teacher Loads for the upcoming year. After the Teacher Loads have been assigned, the Scheduling Committee should go ahead and enter the Teacher Assignments into PowerScheduler. This report can be used to review and update the Teacher Assignments. At the end of this process, the Targ. # Sections and # Sections Assigned should be equal. To update the Targ. # Sections, please do the following:

1. Click the Edit Course button:

2. The Course Information page will open in a new tab. On the Course Information page, click on the Assignments tab. Click the New button to add a new teacher assignment:

3. Use the fields provided to:

1. Select a Teacher (use the Associate button)
2. Specify the Number of Sections that will be assigned to the Teacher
3. Specify the correct Term Code for this section (usually the Full Year code)

4. Ignore the Section Type field at this point. Click the Submit button.

5. Once you have submitted the form, close the Course Information tab:

6. Next, navigate back to the Summary of Course Requests tab and then click the Refresh button (or hit F5) to refresh the data on the page. You should notice that the # Sections Assigned has been updated. Repeat this process for every course:

Part 4: Tips and Tricks

Zooming In and Out

It is sometimes helpful to use the browser “Zoom” function to more or less of the data as per your preference.

• To Zoom In: Select the web page and while holding down the “Ctrl” button, press the “+” button as many times as needed to make the page objects larger.
• To Zoom Out: Select the web page and while holding down the “Ctrl” button, press the “-” button as many times as needed to make the page objects smaller.

The example below shows a web-page Zoomed Out to 80%:

Sorting by Column

By default, the report is ordered alphabetically by the Course Name. You can click on any of the columns, to sort (and re-sort) the data from lowest to highest, and alphabetically from A-Z or Z-A etc. Simply click on the Column Header one or more times to sort the data as per your preference. Once you refresh the page, the data will default to the alphabetical listing by Course Name. The example below shows the data sorted by Primary Requests from lowest to highest:

Using the Search Field

Use the Search Field provided to search for specific data. The example below is showing all rows containing the word Seminary:

Exporting, Copying and Printing Data

Sometimes you may wish to copy, print or export data. Use the buttons provided on the top-left corner of the report as per necessary. The example below shows what happens when the Copy button is clicked. Once the Copy button has been pressed, you can open a new spreadsheet and paste the data directly into the spreadsheet by holding Ctrl + v simultaneously or using right-click paste function your mouse.

Opening and Closing Pages in New Tabs

When the Edit Course button is clicked, the Course Information page will automatically open in a new browser tab. Be sure to keep track of the number of tabs that are open at any given time and close any tabs that are no longer required. You may need to refresh the Summary of Course Request data on a regular basis (by clicking F5) to ensure that the data you are seeing on the page is the most up-to-date:

If you ever need to manually open another tab, and wish to keep you existing tabs as is, simply right-click on any link and use the menu option labelled Open link in new tab: