In-Person Course Planning Tool FAQs
Q: What is the In-Person Course Planning Tool?
A: Instructors use this tool to create rotating, in-person meeting schedules for courses scheduled in rooms that have been de-densified to meet social distancing requirements and cannot accommodate all of the enrolled students at once. The tool allows faculty to easily assign students to groups and create meeting schedules for each group. The course is using a rotating schedule but each group has a stable schedule.
Q: How do I know if my class needs to utilize a rotating attendance plan?
A: In most cases, your department has already indicated which courses are utilizing a rotating, inperson class schedule. If you have questions as to whether or not a course requires such a schedule, check with your department’s schedule deputy. You may also decide to use a rotating schedule even if not required, for pedagogical reasons.
Q: When I use the In-Person Course Planning tool, I do not see all of my courses. What do I do?
A: Please check with your schedule deputy. Individuals who have instructional assignments recorded in Banner should automatically have access to their courses in the tool.
Q: Can my teaching assistants create the rotating course schedules for my class?
A: Yes, provided they have the instructor assignment recorded in Banner. Check with your schedule deputy if you have questions about your teaching assistant assignments.
Q: How do I access the tool?
A: You will access the tool from the Tools section of the Faculty page in myPurdue. Look for the InPerson Course Planning Tool link.
Q: Is there any training on how to use the tool?
A: Yes, there is an In-Person Course Planning Tool Faculty Guide available in myPurdue on the Faculty page in the Tools section. The tool is intuitive and quick. For most courses, a proposed plan is available for your review. You can review and refine this plan before publishing it.
Q: How will students know their group meeting times?
A: Once you have created the in-person meeting schedules for your course and “published” your plan, students will be able to see their in-person meeting schedules on their class schedules available via myPurdue Scheduling Assistant. Students will be encouraged to check their schedules in the myPurdue Scheduling Assistant before showing up for class.
Q: When students register for my course after the meeting plan is published, how are they assigned to meeting groups?
A: If students add your course after you have published your course meeting plan, you will receive an e-mail from the system informing you of the courses that you have with unassigned students. You can go to the tool and assign these students to whichever student group you want to use.
Q: What happens if students drop my course?
A: An overnight process updates the student groups and removes students who have dropped the course from the student group rosters.
Q: My class meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The system proposed three groups, with Group 1 meeting every Monday, Group 2 meeting every Wednesday and Group 3 meeting every Friday. What do I do if I only want two groups for this course?
A: You can use the system to delete Group 3 and manually or automatically assign the former members of Group 3 to groups 1 and 2. You can also create a new meeting for Group 1 that meets every other Friday starting with week 1 of the semester. You can repeat this step for Group 2 creating another every other Friday meeting, but this one starts during week 2.
Q: Why does my draft plan for my course that meets five days a week not have proposed meeting schedules?
A: The system creates proposed meeting schedules for most courses, but for courses with nontraditional or more complex meeting patterns, the system only creates a proposed set of student groups and leaves it up to the instructor to create the meeting schedules for each group.
Q: I have already developed my own plan for creating groups and group schedules. Do I need to use the centrally supported system?
A: In order for students to have consistent, standard information regarding in-person course meeting schedules, it is highly recommended that you utilize this system.
Q: If I am teaching a course in a room that does not have room or seating capacity to support the University’s social distancing requirements, am I required to document my rotating, in-person course schedule using this tool?
A: All in-person courses assigned to rooms that cannot accommodate the enrolled students in accordance with social distancing requirements are strongly encouraged to have an in-person course schedule published via this tool.
Q: Once I’ve developed and pushed my course meeting schedule so that students can see it, can I export it to load into my course Brightspace?
A: The tool supports exporting a student group to a csv file. Brightspace unfortunately does not have mechanism to import student groups from an external file.
