November 3 – Q & A with the Registrar: Scheduling Paired Courses

On November 3, Ian and Rob met with Carmela Gumelli, Dean of Academic Systems, to discuss the feasibility of running several pilot learning community course pairings for F2016.   Carmela walked us through the standard procedures for scheduling, and identified some of the special needs of different programs, profiles, areas of study and certificates at Dawson.   Procedures to force time blocks already exist, which would permit scheduling of back-to-back courses enrolled with a common cohort; it is then a matter of doing so with an eye to optimizing the availability of the course pairings to as many students as possible, and strategizing to recruit the right students at the right time to register in them.  We also touched on the possibility that intensives could be utilized in course pairings or clusters, potentially opening learning community pairings to students whose timetables are crowded with preregistered courses.   We left the meeting with the Registrar’s green light to develop and offer several pilot learning community course pairings for F2016.