Managing Your Schedule
Schedule Administrators are responsible for managing their department(s)’s Semester Schedules. School Administrators will be able to see all the schedules of all departments within their School and will be available for changes needed to Sessions and Courses.
https://sis.columbia.edu/schedules
Navigating your Semester Schedule
The Academic Schedule is broken up by Calendar Year and within that, Semester. The Year value at the top of the screen refers to the calendar year value. For example, Spring 2020 will be from January 2020 to May 2020; Fall 2020 will be the schedule of courses from September 2020 to December 2020.
Courses that are added to the Semester Schedule will appear in the Semester in which they were activated.
At Columbia, a Course is an approved unit of study, the premise of which has been reviewed by department, center, or institute and approved by a host school. Courses are often designed around the instruction and examination of a particular discipline or subject. In some cases, a course may be non-academic and instead exist as a record of student status or residency.
Shown below is a Course summary in the Course Inventory.
A section, or class, is a semester-specific instance of a course. Each section has a number of attributes, such as instructor, class day and time, enrollment capacity, academic point value, grading mode, and class rules. These section attributes are edited and activated in Course Management on a semesterly basis.
To view the sections of a Course, select the carrot button to the left of the Course title.
To edit a Section of a course, use the carrot button to the left of the Section number to open the quick edit menu.
Scheduling: Editing Term and Meeting Patterns
The majority of class sections will have a single meeting pattern, e.g., MW 9-10am, and will only require one Class Meeting record. For sections with variable times, e.g., M 9-10am and F 2-3pm, Schedule Administrators will create multiple, separate Class Meeting records.
For each Class Meeting, Schedule Administrators must specify:
- meeting days/times (can select from an existing “master schedule” dropdown or create a custom time)
- Instructor
- Room Assignment (either Registrar-controlled room or assign sequestered space)
Arts and Sciences and Engineering departments should adhere to the Master Schedule of Classes.
For other schools, the most common patterns used were imported for your convenience.
Note: Review your Class Meetings closely and make sure duplicate or incorrect patterns are removed.
Session dates are established by School Administrators and implemented by the Office of the University Registrar . Session dates include the standard 13-15-week semester, as well as shorter week-long and partial term sessions. Schools may also have specific sessions available for selection.
The value selected in Term Session will determine the dates set on new Class Meeting records.
Important: because Term Sessions determine the dates of the Class Meeting records, any Class Meeting selections must be deleted prior to changing the Term Session. For example, changing a full term course to a partial term course will require first deleting any meeting patterns.
Custom date ranges can be used without selecting a pre-existing Term session. To use an alternative date range, select a Begin date and End date in the Class Meetings menu. These dates begin on Sunday and end on a Saturday; select the range that captures your desired meeting pattern.
Assigning Instructors
Multiple instructors can be added to a class section and each Class Meeting can be assigned a separate instructor. Instructors must be assigned a percentage of teaching and a role (TCHR is most commonly used in SIS). All instructors listed will be able to see class rosters in SSOL and CourseWorks and submit grades.
New instructors must be added to SIS and Course Management by the Office of the University Registrar. Please email [email protected] with the information below to add new instructors to Course Management:
- Date of Birth
- UNI (if a new instructor has not been assigned a UNI, contact Human Resources at (212) 851-2888)
The school department admin will be able to assist professors in changing their names within Columbia Curriculum platforms.
In some cases, an anachronistic name will continue to appear in the instructor information in Courseworks alone. In these instances, please alert [email protected] to resolve.