Feb 23, 2012 | 02:50
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Aug 03, 2011
New online tool helps students, departments plan for courses for year
A new online tool called Future Course now lets students indicate which courses they would like to take during the entire academic year. Although there's no guarantee they will get those courses, the information helps departments plan ahead based on student demand. Ideally, it will also help motivate students to think about the future.
In the 1920s, when UCLA was still at the old Vermont Avenue campus, it was survival of the fastest as students literally ran from classroom to classroom, trying to outrun their peers to be the first to sign up for classes.
In the ’70s, there were computers — but students had to sit in long rows of chairs in Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom, waiting their turn to be called into the computer room. Attendants would then type in their class selections, but if a class was already filled, students had to make a hasty second and sometimes third choice.
Today, students need merely turn on their computers, iPads or smartphones to plan their class schedules for the upcoming quarter. They can load, save and optimize their class schedules by using the Class Planner tool offered by the Division of Undergraduate Education through the MyUCLA website. The two newest features of the Class Planner allow students to link directly to URSA (University Records System Access) and — praise technology! — actually enroll in classes they had previously selected.
Last June, the College took things one step further by introducing a brand-new, enhanced version of the online tool. Future Course allows students to take a long-term look at their schedules by including courses for the entire 2011-2012 academic year. Students are asked to list their top five courses for each term, and the statistics on those choices are then made available to departments in real time.
"With resources so tight, it’s important that we be able to plan ahead effectively to provide courses that students really need," said Judith L. Smith, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. "So this has two purposes: It gets the students thinking ahead, and it allows departments and programs to say, ‘Gee, look at all those students who wanted Course X. We hadn’t thought about doing that.’ "
When students log on to MyUCLA and click on the Class Planner, they see a grid in which they can insert their class choices for the upcoming fall quarter. In the past, students would see a drop-down list of all the different classes available through Fall Quarter 2011 only. In the Future Course mode, the grid disappears and students can see potential classes for Winter and Spring 2012.
Smith added, "It’s kind of a feedback system for departments, and that’s one way we’ll use it. Also, I think it motivates students to actively plan ahead, realizing that their declaration of course planning may actually have an effect on what courses are offered."
When students log on to MyUCLA and click on the Class Planner, they see a grid in which they can insert their class choices for the upcoming fall quarter. In the past, students would see a drop-down list of all the different classes available through Fall Quarter 2011 only. In the Future Course mode, the grid disappears and students can see potential classes for Winter and Spring 2012.
"[Future Course] lets students select their top five courses, not classes. We don’t want to call it a ‘planning tool,’ because they’re not really planning; they’re just saying, ‘This is what I want,’ " explained Christian Spreitzer, IT director of the Division of Undergraduate Education. "We don’t know anything about times or instructors. All we’re doing is taking a poll, seeing what students are interested in and what they want to take."
Spreitzer and his colleagues in the Future Course implementation work group completed the tool in June, asking students to indicate their course choices for the entire academic year. The tool is dynamic, allowing students to make changes to their course lists all the way up through Sept. 1 for Winter Quarter, and through Dec. 1 for Spring Quarter. To date, approximately 7,000 students have provided course-ranking information for the winter and spring quarters.
"We’re going to make this information that we’re collecting from the Future Course planner available to the departments in real time," Spreitzer said, "so that they can hopefully take a look at these numbers and say, ‘Hmm, maybe I should offer one more section of this class,’ or ‘That class that we were thinking of offering doesn’t interest many students — maybe we should offer something else instead.’ "
Historically, UCLA used past experience as the basis for deciding what courses to offer. "This is the first time ever that UCLA has really collected class-demand information," Spreitzer added. "I don’t think anybody has gone to the entire student population and said, ‘What do you want to take next quarter?’ That, for sure, had never been done."
Ultimately, Future Course can also save the campus money because it’s a more efficient allocation of resources, Spreitzer said. Looking at past results is a good indicator of what to offer, he said. But with Future Course, departments can more aggressively decide what the course offerings should be without relying on trial and error.
Future Course grew out of the work of the Undergraduate Nonresident Implementation Task Force, charged by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh with coming up with a plan to successfully recruit and prepare for 2,400 additional nonresident students by 2013. College Chief of Staff Julie Sina headed the task force, which ultimately consisted of 52 faculty and staff working in various committees and subgroups.
"We had groups looking at how we should prepare for an increased number of first-year students, and how we should accommodate an increased number of transfer students," Sina said. "Not only did we increase the number of students as we were asked to do, but we more than doubled the number of students heading into the fall. When our enrollment exceeded our expectations, we were on the way to knowing what we needed to do to be prepared to accommodate that."
Sina appointed Rick Wesel, associate dean of academic/student affairs and professor of electrical engineering, to chair the Academic Issues Work Group. Wesel, in turn, formed a committee called the Information Flow Study Group, from which the idea of Future Course evolved.
"I do know that my own department in engineering has been clamoring for some way to get this kind of data," Wesel said. "They want to know what the demand is. You think you can figure it out by looking at the students, how many quarters they’ve been here and whether they’ve taken the prerequisites for this class to try to guess how many students will take the class. But those things just never seemed to work. It seems so much more helpful just to let the students tell you what they’re going to do."
Fourth-year senior Emily Resnick, the incoming president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, was brought in to help test Future Course. The idea of developing a long-term, course-planning instrument was actually the basis of her election platform, she said, although she was unaware that such a tool was already in the works in the College. Naturally, she was extremely excited to be involved.
"As you set up for your classes, you can project ahead to different quarters and show which courses you’d theoretically like to be enrolled in and what your ranking of them would be," Resnick said. "That’s projecting into the future and helping students stay on track by planning not just for the quarter they’re about to go into, but a whole year in advance.
"Then that can be sent to the Registrar, and it’s like a direct voice of students," she added. "It’s really wonderful and important because students feel like their voices are being heard."
