Support Worker Timetabling

The StudentRelate Support Worker Timetabling module saves administration staff time on the complex task of assigning appropriately skilled people to support students in each lecture. It is scalable and can make team working a possibility in managing larger numbers of support workers (savings increase with numbers of support workers exceeding 30).

Managing the appointments for support workers is handled differently in each university, the simplest being to arrange personal introductions between a student and a selected support worker. The students then manage their own appointments without any further involvement of Student Services staff. For many, this arrangement lacks rigor and discipline, and may result in missed appointments which could be avoided if administrative staff were managing all appointments directly.

There is anecdotal evidence that classroom defaults are the most significant cause of complaints against Student Services, some leading to litigation. There is also the problem of working hours being exceeded if there is no control and no visibility of day-to-day agreements being established and changed. The StudentRelate system is designed for situations where there is an agreed policy of managing each support session, controlling budgets, and recovering costs from funders.

Student Lecture Timetables

Student's 1-week timetable template applies to whole term if inputting manually including code of support type need. (one click sets up full term of lecture appointments)
Student's 1-week pattern amendment tools easily accommodate situations where lectures break the standard pattern
Appointment amendment reports for use when subjects are dropped or student leaves course altogether and support workers become available for re-assignment
Option to input timetables directly from timetable setting systems
Report of full term timetable with all assignment details to print out or e-mail to each student
Report of partial allocation when only the first few weeks can be completed and full term assignments are incomplete. Helps staff and shows head of unit extent of any resource shortfall or possible late assignment problems
New feature to use one term's 'standard week' (with all assignments) to set populate the next term's assignments, saving many days of work.

Support Worker Timetables of Availability

Availability template for weekly pattern entered manually then clicked to apply to whole term when agreed with support worker.
Report of whole term assignment timetable to be printed or e-mailed. Colour coding indicates unconfirmed assignments, provisional assignments and confirmed assignments.
Review bookings for support worker and search to find students in need of available skills to help fill in or balance workload.
Support worker hours summary report for management puposes

Selection and Assignment of Support Appointments

Click on student's lecture and request list of available support workers for full term assignment. Accept provisionally and seek confirmation from support worker. Confirm if agreed.
When support worker is looking for additional work at specific times, click to search for students needing support. Confirm options.
Report on number of unconfirmed assignments needing confirmation, drill down to assess seriousness
Optional functionality to enable support worker process to be customized and managed using portal on University web site

Benefits of Managed Appointments Database

Where this task is manual it and there are fewer than 30 support workers, staff report that they can cope with timetables, availability and communications to confirm arrangements. Using a large paper sheet is reported to be adequate. (this implies management of about 6750 appointments for each term.)

There are exceptionally clever and hardworking individuals who have been able to handle over 50 support workers but with some difficulty (implied number of appointments is 11250). Many institutions with this scale of problem begin to think about adding a second staff member or attempting to use a large Excel spreadsheet approach.

StudentRelate Support Worker Timetabling has the tools for managing the input of basic data, saving days of staff time. With assignment procedures and full-term assignment tools the workload is considerably reduced. With trained users it is also possible for several workers to share the responsibilities and make alterations when students change courses. This approach is scalable.

Software Modules

Contact Details

Support Worker Timetabling

Benefits - Case Studies