Responsible Administrator: Office of the Provost
Date of Last Review: January 2023
Course Scheduling
The goal of a common approach to course scheduling for residential undergraduate students is to support student progress toward their degrees by ensuring access to courses. In order to achieve this goal, the university needs to offer courses distributed across available times throughout the day that are not overly concentrated in a few time periods and do not overlap other time periods. Once these priorities are met, faculty preference about scheduling may be considered. This approach reduces conflict among classes, uses campus facilities effectively, and provides predictable protected time for students’ work and extracurricular commitments.
All synchronous residential undergraduate courses should conform to standard starting times by day of the week. Courses may begin on MWF at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., 10 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Courses may begin on TR at 8 a.m., 9:30 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 6 p.m. Any course that meets a unique requirement for general education or an undergraduate major that meets at 3 p.m. or later must meet two criteria:
- Multiple sections of the course must be available. This could either be multiple sections in the current semester with at least one meeting before 3 p.m. or sections at different times in the long semesters of the academic year. For example, a single section of a course may meet at 3 p.m. TR in the fall if a section of the same course is offered at 8 a.m. TR in the spring.
- The Provost’s Office must approve the proposed schedule before it is entered in Banner.
Residential undergraduate courses that meet before 3 p.m. should conform to the standard length for every day of the week. This is 50 minutes on MWF and 80 minutes on TR. There are two exceptions to standard lengths. First, lab sections that meet once weekly may exceed standard lengths but should conform to standard starting times. Second, Abilene courses that use the accelerated part of term may choose to meet in back-to-back time slots of 110 minutes on MWF and 170 minutes on TR. Accelerated courses may not be scheduled in back-to-back time slots that begin at MWF 9 a.m. or MWF noon in order to avoid conflicts in densely-scheduled time slots.
Any exceptions to this approach for residential undergraduate scheduling on any day of the week before 3 p.m. must be approved by the dean and Provost’s Office.
Some residential undergraduate courses that begin at 3 p.m. or later on any day of the week may use non-standard starting times or lengths. Examples are MW courses that meet for 80 minutes or courses that meet one day per week for 170 minutes. Courses that use non-standard starting times or lengths must be approved by the dean and Provost’s Office.
Weekend courses for residential undergraduate students may begin no earlier than Fridays at 3 p.m. unless approval is granted by the dean and Provost’s Office. Meeting times may not begin on Sundays before noon.