Screen Description
The Rooms screen provides an overview of rooms that can be used for your classes or examinations together with the properties of these rooms, such as room features or room availability.
Details
Select a department in the drop down list. (Note that you can also choose to see rooms for external departments such as Large Lecture Rooms or Computing Labs or rooms for examinations - either final or midterm.) The rooms that can be used by this department will appear. To export this list to a PDF, use the Export PDF button (read more about this export in the description of the Instructional Offerings screen).
The list of rooms is divided into parts based on room type (defined in the Room Types screen accessible from the main menu under Administration → Other → Room Types). An example of such division from the UniTime demo:
- Classrooms
- Instructional rooms assigned to the selected department from the central pool of rooms
- Computing Laboratories
- Computing laboratories assigned to the selected department from the central pool of rooms
- Additional Instructional Rooms
- Instructional rooms that belong to the department
- Special Use Rooms
- Rooms that belong to the department, exist in the room inventory, but not as instructional rooms (for example, conference rooms or offices)
- Not all Special Use Rooms of the selected department are listed here, because most of them are never used for instruction (use "Add Room" or "Add Special Use Room" button to add a room which is not yet in your list or use the Contuct Us screen to request an addition of a special use room)
- Outside Locations
- Locations that are not in the room inventory, e.g., a hospital in town
Click on the room type name below the department drop-down list to easily navigate to the list of rooms of that type.
When working with rooms from your department, click on any line with information about a room to get to a Room Detail screen. You will be able to change some properties of the room, such as availability or room sharing, in screens accessible from this Room Detail screen.
Room Information
Classrooms, Additional Rooms, & Special Use Rooms all have the same column headings, listed below.
- Bldg & Room
- Building abbreviation and room number
- Capacity
- Seating capacity of the room (the maximum number of students who can have a class there at the same time)
- For rooms on campus (not non-university locations), it has to match the room inventory; for rooms other than Classrooms, you can request a change in capacity in the Contact Us screen (the category "Request any other administrative change" is best suitable)
- Availability
- A time grid showing how times in the room are divided among departments that share this room (the list of these departments is in the Departments column)
- All times in white (which is the default color) are shared by all departments listed in the Departments column (and nobody else)
- All times in gray are not available for timetabling
- Roll your mouse over the grid to see exact times of special assignments (such as if a particular department is assigned some particular hours - for example, AgrAdmin has W 3:30p - 4:50p in FORS 216)
- The department that controls this room can change the availability in the Edit Room Availability screen (if you control a given room, the Control column is checked)
- Otherwise, a department can only change sharing of the times that are already assigned to it (e.g., to pass some of these times to another department)
- Departments
- A list of departments sharing this room
- The department that controls the room can add/remove departments to/from the list in the Edit Room Availability screen
- Control
- Checked if the department selected in the drop-down list controls the room
- If checked, the department can set up sharing of this room with other departments (in the Edit Room Availability screen)
- Groups
- A list of groups to which this room belongs (for example, FORS 216 belongs to the Classroom room group)
- You can add/remove the room to/from a group in the Edit Room Groups screen (you will get there from the Room Detail screen by clicking on the Edit Room Groups button)
- Read more about room groups in the description of the Room Groups screen
- Features
- A list of room features
- An example of global room features defined for all rooms:
- Audio Recording (Audio)
- Chalkboard<20 Ft (Chkbd<20Ft)
- Chalkboard>=20 Ft (Chkbd>=20Ft)
- Computer (Comptr)
- Computer Projection (CmptProj)
- Tables and Chairs (T&C)
- Tablet Arm Chairs (TArmC)
- By default, all room features are displayed in a single column; however, there is an option to display them in multiple columns (one column per feature); to change this option,O go to Manager Settings screen (main menu: Preferences → Settings), click on "Display Room Features In One Column", select "No" for multiple columns and click on Update Setting
For Examination Rooms (the Department option All Final Examination Rooms or All Midterm Examination Rooms), a few of the columns are different.
- Exam Capacity
- Displayed for examination rooms
- Capacity of the room if there need to be free seats between students
- Period Preferences
- Displayed for examination rooms
- Preferences for periods during which exams can be held in this room
The Outside Locations columns are as follows:
- Location
- Capacity
- The maximum number of students who can fit in that location at the same time
- Ignore Too Far (IgnTooFar)
- By default unchecked, which means that if a class at this location is back to back with a class on campus, there will be a conflict for students and those back to back classes cannot be taught by the same instructor
- When checked, there is no time conflict between back to back classes (e.g. one at this location, the other one on campus) and the classes can be taught by the same instructor
- Ignore Checks (IgnChecks)
- By default unchecked, which means that the location is considered to be an equivalent of a room - meaning e.g. that there cannot be two classes at the same time
- When checked, there can be two or more classes taught at the same time at this location (this makes sense e.g. if the location is a hospital, where there can be different classes throughout the hospital at the same time)
- The rest of columns is the same as for the other room categories (see above)
You can sort the list of rooms (within categories) by any of the columns that show "Order by this column." when you roll the mouse over its header.
Operations
- Add Room (Alt+R) (admin)
- Go to the Add Room screen to add a new room of any type (but not an outside location)
- Add Non-University Location (Alt+N)
- Add an off campus location to your list of rooms.
- Add Special Use Room (Alt+U)
- Add a Special Use Room - a room belonging to your department that is not usually used for instructions
- Edit Room Sharing (Alt+E)
- Specify sharing rooms between departments that you manage
- Visible only for users managing more than one department
- Takes you to the Edit Room Departments screen
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