Loading students into courses is the process that turns next year's course selections into scheduled sections on each student's schedule. The system reads each student's selections, searches for a combination of sections that fits without conflicts, and writes the result to the student's next year schedule.
The Scheduling Full role is required to access this page, and Scheduling must be set to next year. The multi-action does not appear otherwise. Next year's course sections must exist before you load. To build the master schedule, see Master Schedule.
To load students into courses:
- Navigate to Scheduling > Students.
- Search for and check the students to load.
- Select Load Into Courses from the Actions drop-down.
- Set the options described below.
- Order the student list.
- Click Load.
Note: Students are processed one at a time in list order, and a student processed earlier has first claim on limited seats. Use Sort Students By to build the order, then click Sort. You can also move individual students up and down. If you do not click Sort, the list is processed in the order shown.
Percent Capacity is the percentage of each section's capacity the load is allowed to fill. The default is 100. Example: Enter 90 to leave 10 percent of every section open for students added by hand later.
Max # of paths is the maximum number of schedule combinations the system tries for a student before giving up. The default is 100000 and the minimum is 10000. A higher value places more students but takes longer.
Schedule Alternates allows the system to use a student's alternate course when the primary course cannot be scheduled. The default is unchecked.
Size Balance distributes students evenly across the sections of a course. The default is checked.
Balance males and females distributes males and females evenly across the sections of a course. The default is checked.
Min Ranking and Max Ranking limit the load to selections whose rank falls within this range. Both default to 1. Note: Because Max Ranking defaults to 1, a load run without changing it schedules only rank 1 selections. Set Max Ranking to the highest rank you want scheduled.
Clear Schedules removes the students' existing next year schedules before loading. The default is unchecked. This runs once, before any student is processed.
Department Linking stops a student from being loaded into more than one course from the same department, treating a second course from that department as a scheduling conflict even when the two courses meet at different times. Because it matches on the department, any two courses whose sections share a department collide, not only two sections of the same subject. The default is unchecked.
Semester Linking relaxes Department Linking from one course per department for the whole year to one course per department per semester, so a student could take one course from a department in a fall section and another from the same department in a spring section, but not two that run in the same semester. It only takes effect when Department Linking is checked, and the checkbox is disabled until it is. The default is unchecked.
Priority Then Section Count orders each student's courses by the course's Scheduling Priority before ordering by the number of sections available. The default is unchecked, which orders by the number of sections first so that the courses hardest to place are scheduled first. Note: Scheduling Priority is always applied as a tiebreak. This option only decides whether it outranks the section count.
Results are reported as Selections, Loaded, Bumped, and Incomplete. The load runs in the background and can be cancelled while it is running.
Note: Prerequisites are honored during the load unless the application level Disable Prerequisites setting is turned on. This is not an option on this screen.