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INSTRUCTORS: Gathering Faculty Preferences

Coursedog Support
Modified on: Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 2:59 PM



Table of Contents

Overview
How Preference Forms Work
Associating Preference Forms with a Department
Creating a New Preference Form
Question Breakdown
Global Preferences vs. Course-Specific Preferences
Sharing an External Preference Form
Completing Preference Forms
Editing Preferences
Copying an External Preference Form for a New TermPreference Form Permissions
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Overview

  • You no longer need to sort through emails from faculty requesting times and rooms for their sections because Coursedog automates this process. 

  • Preferences can be collected through preference forms or directly edited within the Instructors page (Academic Scheduling > Instructors). 

  • These preferences can be used to streamline manual or optimizer assignments.


How Preference Forms Work

  • Coursedog Preference forms are online web forms used to collect Instructor preferences. 

  • Coursedog supports two types of Preference Forms: Internal Preference Forms and External Preference Forms.

  • Both types of Forms are built by administrators or Department Schedulers.

  • External Preference Forms can be completed inside the app by authenticated users or sent out via a share link. 

    • This link allows instructors to securely access the form without requiring a Coursedog account. 

    • Preferences submitted via these forms will NOT be put through a workflow.

    • Instructors don't need to have a Coursedog login to submit preferences via this method, but they will need to have a profile at Scheduling > Instructors. 

  • Internal Preference Forms can be used by faculty who are authenticated Coursedog users. 

    • If you opt to use Internal Preference Forms, when a faculty member submits their preferences, their preference form will be put through an approval workflow. 

    • Faculty will submit their preferences via a Request at Scheduling > Requests > Create Request. 


Associating Preference Forms with a Department

Overview | External Preference Forms | Internal Preference Forms

Overview

  • Preference forms can be associated with a specific department. 

  • It is suggested to segment out forms by the department, thereby limiting the number of responses each form receives, making it easier to review. However, you can also create forms that allow all instructors in the institution to submit preferences. 


External Preference Forms

  • You can determine which department each form applies to when you create a New Form and select the department from the “For Department” dropdown.

  • This does not limit which users can complete which Forms, but the Preference Form link for the Math department should only be shared with users in the Math department.


Internal Preference Forms

  • You can determine which department each form applies to when you first create a form via the “For Department” Dropdown. 

  • You can later edit the Allowed Departments via the “Allowed Departments” dropdown on the form builder.

  • Depending on Permissions used, this will ensure that faculty in a given Department can only see and use the Preference Form for their Department.

Creating a New Preference Form

Overview | How to Do It - External Forms | How to Do It - Internal Forms

Overview

Before you can gather preferences, you will first need to build a custom form that matches the needs for your department and/or institution. 


How to Do It - External Forms

Step 1: 

  • Go to Academic Scheduling > Preference Forms > External Forms.

  • Here you will be able to see any forms that you have used, are recommended, or that someone at your institution created.

  • Coursedog Staging comes with a couple recommended templates to help get you started. 

    • We recommend cloning the forms you created in Staging so you can reference those in Production. 

  • Proceed to Step Two to create a new one.

Step 2: Hit “+ New Form”.


Step 3: Fill out the information in the “Create a New Form or Copy an Existing Form” modal.


Step 4: 

  • Click “Create” to start building your form from scratch.

  • Click “Click to copy an existing form” if there’s an existing form you’d like to use as a starting point. 

Step 5: Input a “Welcome Message” under the form title, if desired.


Step 6: 

  • To add a question, simply click the type of question from the “Add Question” question bank on the left and watch it appear on your form.

  • The same question type can be added multiple times.

Step 7: 

  • To edit a question after it’s been added to your form, simply click into it. 

  • Question settings will appear on the left.

  • Question settings vary depending on the question type but can include: 

Question Setting

What It Does

Available Questions

(Secondary Dropdown)

  • This gives you the ability to change the exact nature of the question.

  • See question breakdown below for details.

  • Time Preference

  • Room Preference

Is Required

  • Keep this toggled to the left (off) if you don’t want to require instructors to answer this question. 

  • Toggle to the right if you wish to make this a required question.

All questions

Has Description

  • Keep this toggled to the left (off) if you don’t want to add a question description. 

  • Toggle to the right if you wish to add a question description. 

All questions

Allow Multiple Selections

  • Keep this toggled off to only allow instructions to select one option. 

  • Toggle to the right to allow instructions to select more than one option. 

Dropdown

Edit Options

Use this to determine if you want to show all courses in the question or choose the courses that will be visible. 

  • Course Select

  • Preferred Courses

Use Timeblocks

  • Regardless of whether this is toggled on or off, faculty will have the ability to switch between custom and standard meeting patterns. 

  • If toggled to the left, the default view will show custom times. 

  • If toggled to the right, the default view will show standard meeting patterns.

  • Preferred Times

  • Conflict Times


Step 8: 

  • Type into the field to determine how this question appears to faculty. 

  • “Time Preference (Conflict Times)”, for example, could become “What times can you NOT teach?” 

Additional Note

You will not need to “save” your preference form; that is done automatically.


How to Do It - Internal Forms




Step 1: Create an approval workflow for this particular form if one doesn’t already exist.  

  1. Go to Academic Scheduling > Preference Forms > Internal Forms > Workflows.

  2. Input a name for this workflow, e.g. “Arts & Sciences Preference Forms”. 

  3. Provide a description that makes it clear which form(s) this workflow applies to. 

  4. Click “Add Workflow”. 

  1. You can finish building out this workflow now or later by clicking into it. 

  1. Learn more about building workflows, but note that Preference Form workflows are built exclusively at Scheduling > Preference Forms > Internal Forms > Workflows.


Step 2:

  • Go to Academic Scheduling > Preference Forms > Internal Forms > Forms.

  • Here you will be able to see any forms that have been created. 


Step 2: Click “+ New Preference Form”.


Step 3: Complete the “Add Internal Form” modal.


Step 4: 

  • Use our drag-and-drop form builder to add the fields you’d like to include on this preference form. 

  • Whatever you have configured at Scheduling > Settings > Templates > Preference Forms will serve as the foundation/template for all future forms. In other words: If you have added fields to the Preference Forms template, anytime you create a new Preference Form, its initial fields will mirror what’s on the template. 

  • You can determine which roles are allowed to submit a request by using this form via the “Allowed Roles” setting at the top. 

  • You can also change the assigned workflow via the setting at the top. 

  • Beyond that nuance, this form builder works the same way as every other Coursedog form/template. 

  • Learn more about Building Forms/Templates in Scheduling. 

Step 5: Click the “published” toggle when you’re ready for this form to go live and be available to instructors submitting their preferences. 

Step 6: Click “Save” before exiting. 


Additional Notes

  • In order to use Internal Preference Forms,  instructors will need to have a User Profile (Scheduling > Settings > Users).

  • Ensure the same email address is listed for instructors in their Instructor Profile (Scheduling > Instructors > Show Profile) and their User Profile (Scheduling > Settings > Users > Select User). 

    • If these don’t match or one is blank, that could lead to warnings like “Instructor Account Issue”. 

    • Errors in the UI will indicate the problem, how to fix it, and what will happen if it isn’t fixed. 

Question Breakdown

Overview | Questions with a Downstream Impact | Course Select vs Preferred Courses

Overview

  • The questions you choose to include in your form are vital to gathering valuable preferences.

  • There are three types of questions that allow the Coursedog algorithm to provide recommendations during the scheduling process. These question types will notify you when assigning an instructor if they are a good fit based on their responses:

  1. Preferred Courses (Includes follow-up questions)

  2. Time Preferences 

  3. Room Preferences

  • On the flip side, the following questions simply provide information for your reference:

  1. Text

  2. Yes No

  3. Multiple Choice (You define the choices)

  4. Dropdown

  5. Course Select (Includes follow-up questions)


Questions with a Downstream Impact

Question types with a downstream functional impact on time and room assignments are outlined in the below table.

Preference Type

Description

Preferred Courses

  • The courses an instructor prefers to teach.

  • This searches for the courses already in the schedule for the term the form is attached to rather than the entire course inventory.

  • Includes the ability to add follow-up questions. 

TIME PREFERENCE OPTIONS

Preferred Times

  • The times an instructor prefers to teach.

Conflict Times

  • A time an instructor can’t teach or is unavailable.

  • When scheduling instructors, it is essential to know when they are not available to teach. We can add a “Time Preference” question; set the question to “Conflict Times” and change the wording to, “What times can you NOT teach?”

  • A conflict will arise if you try to schedule a teacher during a time they cannot teach. We will also make the question required by switching the “Is Required” knob to blue. This way, you can ensure that any conflicts will be taken care of before the schedule is submitted. 

  • If an instructor indicates a conflict time, here’s how that will appear in the instructor selection modal when editing a section (refer to this article for more details on section scheduling):

Preferred Meeting Length

The length of the meeting pattern that an instructor prefers to teach.

Back to Back Courses

If instructors wish to teach back to back, they can specify how many back to back courses they want, and if these courses should be in the same room.

Interval Between Courses

The amount of time instructors want between courses.

ROOM PREFERENCE OPTIONS

Preferred Rooms

The rooms in which an instructor prefers to teach.

Preferred Room Features

  • The features of a room in which an instructor prefers to teach.

  • Faculty will see a dropdown based on the room features your institution has created and can select multiple options.

Preferred Room Type

  • The room type in which an instructor prefers to teach. 

  • An example would be “Seminar room”.

Preferred Room Capacity

The capacity of a room in which an instructor prefers to teach.

Preferred Building

The building in which an instructor prefers to teach.


Course Select vs Preferred Courses

  • The difference between Course Select and Preferred Courses is that when assigning an instructor, the latter will notify you if they are a good fit.

  • If Preference questions are embedded under a Course Select question, they will not be captured in the faculty member's profile or impact time or room assignment recommendations. 


Global Preferences vs. Course-Specific Preferences

Overview | Global Preferences | Course-Specific Preferences

Overview

Preferences can either be global or course-specific. 

Global Preferences

  1. Global preferences impact scheduling recommendations for all courses the faculty member is assigned to.

  2. Global preferences are not embedded below any question.

  3. Conflict Times are stored globally.


Course-Specific Preferences

  1. Course-specific preferences impact scheduling recommendations for preferred courses, as demonstrated below.

  2. Capturing course-specific preferences is done by asking “follow-up” questions below the Preferred Course question.

  3. Preferred Times are captured for a specific course.



Sharing an External Preference Form

Once a form has been built, it can be shared with instructors. 


Step 1: Click on “Share” in the top-right corner of the form builder. 


Step 2 (OPTIONAL): 

  • Set a password for the form, if desired.

  • If you set a password for the form, instructors will need to enter the password before they can fill out the form.


Step 3: Click on the “Create Link” button.

  • This will create a secure share link for the form.

  • You can also choose to “make it private”, which would require instructors to be logged in to view the form. 

Step 4: If sharing via link, copy the link.


Step 5: Send the link to instructors.


Completing Preference Forms

Go here for an article that walks instructors through the form submission process. 


Editing Preferences

Overview | How To Do It | How External and Internal Preference Forms Interact

PATH: Academic Scheduling > Instructors (Left-Hand Nav) > (Select Individual)


Overview

You can manually change an instructor’s preferences.


How To Do It

Step 1: Navigate to Academic Scheduling > Instructors (Left-Hand Nav) > (Select Individual)


Step 2: Click the blue pencil icon next to "Instructor Preferences" in their profile.


Step 3: Inside of the instructor preferences view, users can edit a variety of preferences.


How External and Internal Preference Forms Interact

  • It’s possible for an instructor’s preferences to be overridden by a subsequent submission. 

  • In short: If you're looking at the same term and instructor, anytime preferences are submitted – regardless of whether it’s via an Internal or External form – that submission will override their existing preferences for that term. 

  • For example, if you collect preferences via an External Preference Form but then an instructor later submits a Preference Form Request (i.e. Internal Preference Form), if that request is approved, it will override their existing preferences. 

    • Similarly, if an instructor revisits a link for an External Preference Form for the same term, they’ll receive a popup that tells them they already submitted the form but gives them the option to edit. 

    • Any edits they make will override their existing preferences for that term. 


Copying an External Preference Form for a New Term

Overview | Viewing Forms for a Specific Term | Copying An Existing External Preference Form

Overview

  • Internal Preference Forms can be edited and re-used from term to term (instructors will have the option to select the applicable term when creating their request). 

  • External Preference Forms are term-specific. 

  • The below instructions apply to External Preference Forms only. 


Viewing Forms for a Specific Term

  • If you would like to view the External Performance Forms associated with a given term, navigate to “Preference Forms > External Forms”. 

  • If the term you want to view isn’t already displayed, click the listed term name to change it. 


Copying An Existing External Preference Form

Step 1: Open the form you wish to copy.


Step 2: Hover over the listed term in the top left of the screen to see a “copy” icon appear.

Step 3: Click on the “copy” icon. You may now select which term you would like to copy the form to, select relevant Departments for the form, and re-name the form if desired.


Preference Form Permissions

  • The ability to view, add, and edit preference forms will depend on the role permissions for any given role.

  • The super admin can grant users access to forms on a role-by-role basis. This can be done under Settings > Roles > (Desired Role) > Preference Forms

  • Recommend settings for Instructors:

    • Add Forms - Deny

    • Edit Forms - Deny

    • View All Forms within Institution - Deny

    • Edit Preference Forms for Other Users - Deny

    • Submit Instructor Preference Form - Allow

  • Learn more about what each of these permissions does.

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