Product
Demonstration Guide (Step by Step)
What will the
Visual Classroom Scheduler do for me!
In 30 minutes this demonstration guide
aims to show you how you can:
Save up to 80% of your manual
scheduling time,
Get 10-20% more use from your
rooms,
Reduce under and over
allocation of teaching staff,
Cost your programs and review total hours and
statistics,
Eliminate hidden clashes
forever and produce
a far better result for Teaching staff,
Students and Campus Management.
Interested?? Then lets get started to see how this
might be achieved in your area!
From the
Windows task bar, select
[Start],
[Programs], [Visual Classroom Scheduler]. [VCS3].
VCS will
automatically open the demo.vss file and display 76 class activities on the
screen.
The demo has
all functionality for you to evaluate but can not print timetables, export or
import data
from
spreadsheets, or merge departments into Campus files.
This demo can
save up to 100 activities including meetings or maintenance activities,
so you can add,
change or delete activities and save your results.
Each class or
activity can span many weeks across the semester as
required.
Screen Information
VCS has four
ways to view the schedule data, the first we will try is the “Room
view”
Down the left
hand side, there are Room
names
Across the top
of the center panel there are columns for each Day of the week.
Inside the
center panel itself, the class activities are shown as colored
rectangles.
The lower panel
reveals the class details when the
mouse is over a rectangle.
The right hand
panel shows totals and statistics
for each room.
In each column,
morning classes are first followed by afternoon and evening
classes.
Classes can be
dragged with the mouse and dropped into another room or another
day.
The room or day
details will be automatically updated – try it now, click and drag
one.
Click on the
red
one in
unallocated room ?? and drag it to G1.01 Science and
release.
You have now
automatically allocated the red
class to a
spare science room.
What about the
others – drag the ?? blue, yellow and brown ones to a spare
room.
The colors tell
us something – “subject” color has been selected from the color
menu.
All red
activities are
the same subject, so are the blues and
browns..……
Reds are 2250A Phys 1 – Moving the mouse
over the red
activity – no
click, I can see
all the class
details revealed in the lower panel – the zoom panel.
The subject
data even has a red border to help spot the data.
Back to the
screen, did you drag the red
class to a room
with other red
classes?
G1.02 Science
already has red
classes – and
probably has suitable “red”
equipment.
Why not drag
the red
class down to
G1.02 Science and drop there.
Fix up our
other allocations – yellow to yellows and brown with the browns
eh!
Is this easy?
and a bit of fun too? Timetabling by the colors.
We can delete
the ?? room – but you might use it later to swap some classes
around.
Lets try the
Instructor
View
or teacher
view.
From the main
menu, select (V)iew, Ins(t)ructor or (T)eacher.
Now - down the
left hand side, there are Instructor or
Teacher names
All the class
details are shown as before – this time against each
Instructor.
The right hand
panel now shows total teaching hours
for each Instructor.
The Excess
column shows hours in blue
for under
allocated Instructors and
hours in
yellow for
over allocated Instructors.
The first name
is ?? just like in the Room view, so… we have un-allocated
classes.
Just like
before, we can allocate classes according to the subject
color.
Drag
green,
blue
and yellow to
Instructors who can teach green, blue and yellow.
Tip! – we also
want to pick Instructors who are short of teaching hours.
Drag
green to
Adi Nugroho, he needs 36 hours this semester.
Drag blue
to Bev
Williams, she needs 54 hours this semester.
Drag yellow to
Charles Trader, he needs 54 hours this semester.
Get the
idea??
Our example has
settings of 19 teaching hours per week for 18 weeks.
You could
change the settings to suit your Campus in (E)dit
S(e)ttings.
Lets try the
Class Group
View
and fix any
issues there – Select (V)iew, (C)lass
You could try
swapping activities between classes to give classes a day
off….
Now lets try
the Subject
View - no
need to fix issues here but
interesting.
Too many at the
same time makes it difficult to find Instructors and
Classrooms.
Having some at
the same time makes it easy to collapse classes mid term.
Now back to the
Room
View
for
a moment (try the square room icon this time).
From the main
menu, select ©olors and click on “Periods”.
Using this
"color" setting, morning classes are green,
afternoon red,
and evening mauve.
Gaps in the
display readily indicate available times for more classes.
Can you see opportunities for extra classes? 10 - 20% extra is a
snap!
Printed Timetables
VCS has
stunning, colourful timetables and listings.
You can see the
examples on screen in the demo (but can’t print I’m
sorry).
Colorful
timetables and listings are also available in HTML format for your web
site.
There is a
weekly budget spreadsheet print to monitor your teaching
budget.
VCS Resource
Costed Summaries apportion room costs, teaching costs and
consumables
across all activities, so informed educational decisions are readily
made.
VCS Campus
Maangement Services provide training and expertise to save you
heaps.