Scheduling Scan Results April 2010
Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Table Of Contents Study Design ....................................................................................................... 1
Schedule Development .................................................................................... 3
Issues Impacting Schedule Development ........................................................................................ 4 Classroom Issues .................................................................................................................................. 4 Input Into Scheduling Process ............................................................................................................. 5 Cancellation Issues .............................................................................................................................. 6 Curriculum Impact ............................................................................................................................... 6 Schedule Timing Issues ........................................................................................................................ 7 Off‐Site Issues ...................................................................................................................................... 7 Schedule Development Process .......................................................................................................... 8 Recommendations For Schedule Process ........................................................................................... 10 Analysis And Recommendations ................................................................ 12
Data Requirements .............................................................................................................................. 13 Cancellation Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 14 College ............................................................................................................................................... 14 Site ..................................................................................................................................................... 15 Division .............................................................................................................................................. 16 Course ............................................................................................................................................... 19 Section ............................................................................................................................................... 19 Cancellation Dates ............................................................................................................................ 20 Recommendations For Cancellation .................................................................................................... 21 Efficiency Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 23 College ............................................................................................................................................... 23 Site ..................................................................................................................................................... 24 Division .............................................................................................................................................. 25 Discipline ........................................................................................................................................... 27 Course ............................................................................................................................................... 28 Section ............................................................................................................................................... 29 Recommendations For Efficiency ........................................................................................................ 29 Facility Utilization ................................................................................................................................. 32 Physical Seat Utilization ................................................................................................................... 32 Classroom Utilization ........................................................................................................................ 34 Room Usage ...................................................................................................................................... 39 Room Utilization ............................................................................................................................... 40 Recommendations For Facility Utilization ........................................................................................... 40 CLARUS Corporation Page i Scheduling Scan Report March 2009 Curriculum Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 42 Curriculum Completion .................................................................................................................... 43 Within Semester Curriculum Scheduling ........................................................................................ 49 General Education Courses .............................................................................................................. 50 Recommendations For Curriculum Scheduling ................................................................................... 52 Appendices......................................................................................................... 54
Appendix A. Cancellation Analysis ................................................................................................. A‐1 Appendix B. Efficiency Analysis ....................................................................................................... B‐1 Appendix C. Facility Utilization ........................................................................................................ C‐1 Appendix D. Curriculum Analysis .................................................................................................... D‐1 CLARUS Corporation Page ii Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Study Design CLARUS Corporation Page 1 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 The College of the Redwoods sought the services of a consultant to examine their class schedule and to
determine the effectiveness of the College’s class scheduling process. The scope of work for this project
consisted of the evaluation of the schedule and the schedule process and included the following activities:


Interviews with College of the Redwoods representatives pertinent to the scheduling process
o Groups and individuals which were interviewed included: area coordinators (academic),
administrative assistants to the academic areas, student services personnel, faculty, offsite coordinators, marketing and public relations, administrative team, and institutional
research staff
Examination of the class schedule which included:
o Effectiveness of the schedule development process for creating a class schedule driven by
student needs
o Effectiveness by location and division in scheduling the best mix of offerings each
semester, specifically examining
 The scheduling of the courses most in demand and required by students to
complete curricular requirements with the appropriate number of sections and
distributed among the optimum days and times
 The scheduling of courses offered among off-site locations
o Effectiveness in coordinating scheduling patterns among the locations and divisions to
provide students with flexible and convenient options
o Effectiveness in maximizing utilization of facilities
At CLARUS Corporation, we understand the class schedule is an extremely important component of the
College, with its impact not only on the College’s fiscal health, but a major impact on current and potential
student enrollments.
On December 1, 2009, the Project Consultant from CLARUS Corporation met with key members of the
academic team at the College of the Redwoods. Interviews were conducted with the President, Vice
President of Instruction, Vice President of Student Support and Learning Services, Deans, Enrollment
Management/ Student Services Personnel, Schedule Coordinator, Institutional Research, Academic
Support Staff, Area Coordinators and faculty responsible for schedule development for Mendocino and
Del Norte areas, academic faculty, career and technical education faculty, and students.
After visiting the campus, a conference call was conducted with the Institutional Research staff, and data
needs were discussed. A data readiness form was sent to the Institutional Research staff which outlined
the data needed for development of the semester files needed to conduct the efficiency examination of the
College’s schedule. CLARUS Corporation worked with the Institutional Research staff to ensure that the
data being used for the analysis met the parameters of the study and was in the correct format for analysis
by the software program ClassTracks. The final run of census data was sent to CLARUS Corporation for
analysis April 14, 2010. After analysis of the scheduling data using ClassTracks, a schedule analysis
software, tabular results and recommendations were developed. The Project Consultant from CLARUS
Corporation met with the academic leadership at College of the Redwoods on April 28 and 29, 2010 to
review the data by area for all of the groups initially interviewed and to present the recommendations.
The following sections of this report outline the specific activities which CLARUS Corporation conducted
to address the issues referenced above in the evaluation of the class schedule. For each area addressed,
recommendations have been made for consideration by the College. Detailed copies of the analyses
developed for this report and used in the analysis are presented in the Appendices and are available in the
data set in the ClassTracks software program.
CLARUS Corporation Page 2 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Schedule Development CLARUS Corporation Page 3 pus
sit
Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 The CLARUS Corporation Scheduling Scan project started with a visit to campus on December 1, 2009. A
series of interviews were conducted with the key College employees pertinent to the scheduling process, as
well as with students. It was important that the issues and concerns of the administration, academic team,
and staff be heard during the first visit about the scheduling process. The interviews focused on the key
concerns and issues regarding the scheduling process and the schedule development. The interviews were
conducted using both individual interviews and small group discussions with the following:
 President


Vice President of Instruction
Vice President of Student Support and Learning Services


Deans
Enrollment Management/ Student Services Personnel


Schedule Coordinator
Institutional Research


Academic Support Staff
Area Coordinators and faculty responsible for schedule development for Mendocino and Del Norte
areas
Academic faculty
Career and technical education faculty


 Students
In the following sections, the issues addressed in the interviews with be summarized and discussed and
the schedule development process at College of the Redwoods will be examined. Recommendations will be
made with respect to the schedule development process.
Issues Impacting Schedule Development Common issues surfaced across the groups interviewed at College of the Redwoods regarding the
scheduling process. For some groups, the issues were pertinent to their own areas, like academics or
students services, and for other groups, the same issues were discussed as problematic with the scheduling
process across the College. All comments have been summarized and are grouped by area in the following
section. This should serve as background information to inform the data analysis.
Classroom Issues
Everyone agreed that space at the Eureka Campus is at a premium in the mornings and the evenings.
Those are the prime attendance times and trying to add sections at those high fill times can be very
problematic when scheduling classes. Rooms were a major problem noted by everyone at the College of
the Redwoods. First, all rooms are not created equal. When scheduling the computer labs and science labs,
not just any class can be put in those rooms – and the limited availability of labs can reduce the number of
sections offered that need lab space. All classrooms at the College are not created equal – respondents in
the interviews noted that not all of the general classrooms are SMART classrooms. Some of the
administrative assistants noted they had to actually go look at rooms to determine if they were SMART
classrooms that could be scheduled for their faculty. If the classroom needed was not a SMART classroom,
the instructor could not use the classroom if it did not have the equipment needed to fit their classroom
teaching methods.
Another problem noted was that there is no way for those trying to schedule the classrooms to know what
rooms are available at what times during the scheduling process, other than calling the administrative
assistants in the buildings, and even then the academic coordinators may not have passed on schedule
CLARUS Corporation Page 4 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 information to the administrative assistants. A few of those interviewed also noted that some of the
academic areas would block rooms with ghost sections to make sure that rooms are available for sections if
needed.
Room ownership was a major discussion point for the College. Participants pointed out that some
academic areas “own” rooms (even if they are not specialized rooms like a computer lab, but a general
classroom that other divisions could teach in), others have “dibs” on rooms, and others have no rooms at
all. The room ownership issue makes it difficult for some to try to schedule if more sections are needed –
the rooms are not available to them. But a major issue with some “owning” rooms is that no one has final
authority over room assignment. The College may not be utilizing the rooms most efficiently because no
one has true oversight of the room assignments.
A final problem noted with respect to rooms and classroom space is the physical room inventory is either
incorrect or non-existent. Personnel at the College do not have a correct physical room inventory that lists
correct room features. This necessitates administrative assistants to either keep their own room
inventories – which cannot be easily shared with others – or necessitates personnel having to physically
visit each of the rooms to determine what features (chair, desks, SMART, etc.) the room has.
Input Into Scheduling Process
Academic coordinators and other personnel at the College all agree that there is very little data being used
in the development of class schedules because it has been difficult to obtain. Historical trends for courses
and sections are not readily available, and it is not easy for anyone other than the staff in Institutional
Research (IR) to pull the information. The academic coordinators may be keeping their own data but
many noted the information is “in their heads” and not easily accessible by others. The academic
coordinators “know” what classes fill first, but without the knowledge readily accessible by others, it is
difficult to make decisions as to what sections should have priority for rooms and to make fair room
assignments. Only one academic area noted they do detailed statistical analyses of their schedule when
planning.
Community colleges in California are funded by FTES and are capped. When the College of the Redwoods
goes over cap, the additional enrollment growth is not funded – and in California, the tuition rate is so low
that there is not a cash incentive for increasing enrollments a large percentage over cap. Typically, a
college has had to pay close attention to scheduling FTES. Personnel at the College of the Redwoods noted
that their perception is that they have been told to schedule for growth with no regard for the FTES. In
other words, they believe they have been told to simply add sections to increase enrollments and to
disregard FTES targets in scheduling.
The student services personnel at the College of the Redwoods also feel they have no mechanism to
provide input into the scheduling process. Currently, there is no mechanism for student services to
provide formalized feedback, like the wait lists. Student services personnel recognize that the development
of the schedule is an academic responsibility, but they believe that they have valuable information that
would benefit those planning the schedule from their interactions with students. The advisors at the
College work closely with students and are intimately involved in their schedule planning – trying to move
the students to completion of programs. The advisors are the front-line – they know what courses students
are having trouble scheduling to complete programs and this information should be shared in a formal
way with the academic personnel responsible for scheduling.
Many of the students at the College of the Redwoods take developmental tests and outcomes suggest that
developmental courses be taken. Student services personnel perform these tests and have immediate
information as to the numbers of students who will need developmental sections. They are frustrated
when the class schedule does not have enough developmental seats needed to meet the number tested.
There should be a formal process by which this information can be shared with the academic coordinators.
CLARUS Corporation Page 5 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Student services personnel provided examples of having to turn students away because there were not
enough developmental sections offered.
Cancellation Issues
Cancellation of classes makes a major impact on students – it impacts attainment and retention as well as
scheduling. The students interviewed at the College of the Redwoods were concerned that classes needed
for graduation were either cancelled within the third day after the start of registration for a semester or
after the start of classes. In either scenario, the cancellation of a required class makes it difficult for the
students to complete their programs at the College. They may have to take a class they do not need to
remain full-time and financial aid eligible, or they may have to return an additional semester and delay
graduation if a class that is needed is cancelled.
Notifying students of cancellations also was described as a “hit and miss” process at the College. The
administrative assistants sometimes call and inform the students that classes have been cancelled –
depending on the academic area. But the administrative assistants can only refer the students to call
students services – they cannot change the students’ schedules. Student services reported they have no
direct authority over informing students of cancellations. If they did, they could not only inform the
students, they could also assist them at the time of contact in making schedule changes needed to keep the
students enrolled at the College.
Curriculum Impact
Students at the College of the Redwoods noted they were not able to get the classes needed to graduate or
transfer. Students noted that the classes they needed for graduation consistently cancelled, necessitating
them to do an independent study or have to remain enrolled another semester to try to graduate. The
students noted that the classes required for graduation will fill three days after registration opens and
another class is not opened – again delaying them from graduating. The students also noted they are
unsure what semester “required” classes will be offered – those classes that the College only offers once a
year or only a certain semester. The academic programs are not laid out by semester and the students are
unsure when classes are offered – it creates many difficulties for them trying to plan schedules when they
are unsure of the course order. This led the students and personnel to a discussion of developing a twoyear schedule. While one academic department at the College currently plans its schedule on a two-year
basis, it is not available to students or student services personnel, so even though they plan for two years,
no one can access the schedule.
Student services personnel also noted that the students cannot get through the curriculum in a reasonable
time frame. Personnel in student services noted that they cannot assist a student in planning their degree
with the current system. They too – the personnel in student services – are unsure when low-demand
required courses will be offered, so trying to advise students is very difficult. Student services personnel
cannot assure students of when the classes will be offered, or even if they will be offered with cancellations.
Not having a reliable degree plan and a schedule that follows it has a major impact on recruiters and
advisors when trying to work with students. And if students cannot get the classes, the advisors get the
brunt of the students’ frustrations.
Personnel at the College expressed concern that the College is offering too many general education courses
each semester as choices and diluting the total number of general education enrollees. In other words, if
there are 100 students needing a general education class and four classes would fit the requirements, then
the classes would average 25 students. But if the College offers 10 general education classes that would
meet their requirements, then potentially each class would only have 10 students. Personnel expressed
concerns that the large number of general education classes being offered were spreading enrollments too
thin over too many classes. In addition, personnel wanted to know, since there are so many general
education options, who is determining the best general education options to schedule to meet student
demand? In other words, which ones are really needed for the transfer patterns at the College?
CLARUS Corporation Page 6 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 In developing student schedules for specific programs, personnel reported that it was difficult for students
to put together preferred schedules based on the class availability. The academic departments schedule in
isolation of each other. The academic areas do not look at the curriculum for a program and determine
when each area is offering classes. In some cases, the required classes for a program may all be on one
night. For example, three different divisions schedule a required course on a Tuesday night and the
student can only take one class that semester; but if the departments had scheduled the curriculum, one
class would be on Monday night, one on Tuesday night, and one on Wednesday night – the students could
enroll in all three classes that semester. Currently, they are making the student choose between needed
courses and again limiting the potential number of students in the classes since they cannot enroll in more
than one per night.
Schedule Timing Issues
Pass time has been a major problem at the College of the Redwoods. In the past, the College of the
Redwoods devised a daily schedule that allowed for only five minutes of pass time between classes. In Fall
2009 and Spring 2010, the College only allowed five minutes of pass time for classes – the Monday/
Wednesday blocks were 8:30-9:55am, 10:00- 11:25am, 11:30-12:55pm, 1:00-2:25pm, 2:30-3:55pm, and
4:00-5:25pm. The Chancellor’s Office of the California Community Colleges requires a 10 minute pass
time between classes, and nationally the pass time between classes is 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the
day, blocks, and campus size. This was a major topic of discussion during the interview sessions –
personnel pointed out that even faculty cannot reach a classroom on the other side of campus in five
minutes. While the five minute pass was deemed a problem, many faculty in the interviews noted that they
simply let students out early to get to their next class on time. By the end of this project, the College had
implemented a new schedule for Fall 2010 with a 10 minute pass between classes. The new Monday/
Wednesday blocks are 8:30-9:55am, 10:05- 11:30am, 11:40-1:05pm, 1:15-2:40pm, 2:50-4:15pm, and 4:255:50pm.
Not only students had concerns about daily scheduling. Faculty noted that when they were scheduled for
an evening class and then the next day for an early morning class, it caused hardships for them – and for
students. Both students and faculty noted the need for a college hour. Even though the College basically
runs a four-day campus, with a majority of the classes not meeting on Friday, students noted they are
unlikely to return to campus on a Friday to attend club meetings only. They want a college hour during the
four day a week schedule to increase participation in student government and clubs. Faculty would also
like to have a college hour for meetings and other campus business.
Students noted a need for more diverse scheduling to meet their needs. Currently, the majority of classes
at the College of the Redwoods are two day a week classes (Monday/ Wednesday or Tuesday/ Thursday),
and if a student misses a class for a school function or illness, they have missed half of the material for the
week. The students would like to have more diverse scheduling options – Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday
classes, were they would only miss one-third of the material for the week; evening classes after 6pm which
would allow them to work full-time and still attend college; and weekend classes to allow more adults to
attend who work full-time Monday to Friday. But the faculty who currently teach on the weekend caution
that the College has to make a commitment to students on the weekend. Faculty who teach on the
weekend arrive and find locked classroom doors, no heat in rooms in winter, and no access to student
services or support services for students. Students also noted the need for more classes online – they want
more online options since they can increase their class load without having to commit to a set schedule.
Off-Site Issues
The College of the Redwoods serves a broad geographic area with a limited population base. Concern was
expressed by personnel over the potential dilution of courses by spreading the schedule too thin over the
off-sites. In other words, if two locations are 15 minutes apart and the same classes are offered, the College
is spreading the limited enrollment over two classes rather than completely filling one class. Personnel
expressed concern over the increase in off-sites and noted they were unsure of the purpose of the off-sites.
If the academic coordinators responsible for scheduling are unsure of the goals for the off-site, it is difficult
CLARUS Corporation Page 7 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 to know what and how to schedule classes for the site. And as with many off-site locations, there appeared
to be confusion over who is really responsible for scheduling classes at the off-sites – who has final
authority and oversight?
Another issue discussed by the off-site directors was the pulling of a course that was successful at the offsite and only offering the course on the main campus. The off-site directors would like at least an annual
schedule developed – they see their current approach right now as scattergun. There is no strategic
approach to scheduling and if students cannot see what they can do at a site, they may not initially enroll.
Finally, better communication is needed between the academic coordinators and site directors. Academic
coordinators have cancelled classes and not even informed the site directors.
Schedule Development Process
The purpose of the interviews with the academic support staff and the area coordinators of the various
areas at the College of the Redwoods was to determine what the process was for the College, the various
departments, and the off-sites in developing a schedule for an upcoming semester. First, the academic
calendar is set for the College. Then the academic areas begin their schedule development, but each
academic department or area has a similar but unique process for developing the schedule of classes for
the College. The academic areas noted they use past history but the definition of “history” is very different
depending on the area. For some areas, they simply “know” what classes fill first. This is based on the fact
that they have been doing it for a long time and are very familiar with their area. Based on the past fill of
classes, they can predict the future based on what has happened in the past. The problem with this is that
if the area coordinator suddenly leaves the College, what they “know” in their head is lost to others who
may have to step in and schedule, and there is not a systematic way of keeping data about what classes are
filling and what should be offered.
Other academic areas noted they “keep in their head” what classes are offered each Fall and Spring and
schedule accordingly. In other words, they “know” which classes they offer in the Fall and what is offered
in the Spring. Again, the problem with this scenario is that others at the College may not know. For
example, a new faculty member who may be asked to schedule classes may not “know” which classes are
offered Fall only and Spring only. Personnel in student services trying to advise students may not “know”
which classes are offered Fall and Spring, and finally the students may not know that classes will be
offered Fall or Spring. Each area should make available to all when classes are offered – for example, Fall
only classes should be noted in the catalog with the curriculum areas. Only one academic area at the
College appears to keep documentation readily available of a two-year schedule of classes and evaluates
past offerings with data from institutional research.
After a preliminary list of classes is developed by each of the academic areas, input is gained from full-time
and adjunct faculty about scheduling. It was not clear whether the list of classes actually had times
attached prior to discussing the schedule with faculty. For many academic areas, it appeared that the area
coordinators developed a list of classes and noted approximately how many sections would be needed
prior to visiting with faculty. The full-time faculty were approached (in the majority of the academic areas)
and asked when they are available to teach, or which sections they prefer to teach. After the full-time
faculty are scheduled, the adjuncts are approached. In some academic areas, the same adjuncts teach year
after year, so these adjuncts are approached first and asked about their availability to teach the sections
that still needed an instructor. For other areas, academic coordinators have to contact potential adjuncts
and determine when they would be available to schedule some of the sections not filled – they first have to
find the adjuncts, and then work with them to try to schedule at times the adjuncts are available. Finally,
some areas simply scheduled sections without faculty assignments if adjuncts were not readily available.
Next, the search for rooms begins at the College of the Redwoods. After listening to the description of the
process of searching for rooms, it appears that the College embarks on a “Scavenger Hunt.” First, some of
CLARUS Corporation Page 8 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 the rooms at the College are “owned” by academic areas – in other words, a certain academic area controls
the schedule of classes offered in certain rooms and will always schedule their academic areas’ sections
first in these rooms. Second, other academic areas at the College have no rooms assigned – they own no
space, but have “dibs” on rooms. In other words, these academic areas are second in line for an owned
room – after the academic area who owns the room assigns it, if there is space left over for a section to
meet, these academic areas with “dibs” will get to schedule a section in the room in the space available.
This may mean the academic area with “dibs” may have to take a time less than satisfactory for their
students simply because of room availability. Finally, the true “scavenger hunt” begins. The administrative
assistants and area coordinators who do not “own” rooms start looking for available space. There is not
one central physical location or person that has a master list of rooms – it appears that an academic area
in a building has a semi-correct room list, but it is not common knowledge nor readily accessible to others
on campus. The administrative assistants have to start calling other administrative assistants to determine
if there is a room available at a particular time in another building. Some of the assistants even reported
that they have to physically go look at rooms to determine the room size (how many seats) and the room
features (if it is a SMART classroom). A tremendous amount of personnel time is used in repeating this
process each semester. After hunting for rooms, some academic areas still cannot find a room at the time
needed so the room goes on the schedule with a TBA room – to be announced later.
The academic areas are responsible for scheduling the classes for the off-site locations as well. It appears
that some off-site coordinators are actively involved in the scheduling for their area – they make
suggestions to preliminary schedules for the off-site, work with academic coordinators to get the classes
needed and even work to get adjuncts to teach the classes. But other off-site coordinators noted that they
did not get the classes they needed and the off-sites were seen more as an afterthought than a systematic
component of scheduling.
Finally, the schedule of classes is then entered into the computer system. Prior to this point, the schedule
appears in paper copies in various forms depending on the academic area. After the schedule is entered,
copies are circulated for review and proofing. This happens multiple times as corrections are made to the
schedule – times are corrected, faculty names, rooms re-assigned, etc. The correction process appears to
be fluid and does not have a formal start and finish. It continues (over and over), even after the schedule is
finalized and published for students. In addition, the CLARUS Corporation project team leader could not
discern any formal process for making changes during the schedule process. In other words, there are not
any formal processes that have to be followed for adding or cancelling classes after the schedule is input
into the computer system and “finalized.” At present, it appears that anyone can simply add or change a
class without a signature of a dean or vice president.
After the schedule is “finalized,” it is then sent for publication and a final proof, but changes are still being
made. The schedule is then posted to the web and the College is ready for registration. After the schedule is
finalized, the administrative assistants to the academic departments then have to create room charts for
the schedule. Some have a color coded layout of the sections in the rooms and others appear to only have a
list of sections by room.
The schedule is now opened for student registration. Some academic areas begin cancelling classes
immediately after the registration process opens for students and yet others do not cancel any classes until
a few days prior to classes. It is unclear as to who at the College is responsible for notifying students that
their classes have been cancelled. Some of the academic areas note their administrative assistants call the
students, student services noted they try to call when they know, and others apparently are never notified
until they attempt to walk into their class – which no longer exists.
Within a short time after the start of the new semester, the College starts this process all over again.
CLARUS Corporation Page 9 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Recommendations For Schedule Process After reviewing the schedule development process at The College of the Redwoods, it is clear that several
issues need to be addressed in the development process. The decision makers for the schedule, the
academic coordinators, have little access to trend data in making decisions about what to schedule for an
upcoming semester. Other than one division, they have virtually had no access to previous semester
schedules to determine if sections are increasing or decreasing at certain times and what has historically
cancelled over the last few semesters.
Recommendation: Provide historical trend data by section for each division to review prior to
development of the next semester schedule. The information to be provided should include
cancellation rates by section, efficiency or fill rates by section, and fill rates and enrollments for
sections by time of section. Provide the information in an easy-to-use format, preferably graphic.
The College of the Redwoods is not an extremely large college. Due to the number of students and the
number of programs offered, many classes can be offered only once a year and be successful in filling.
Because the College cannot offer every class every semester, it is extremely important for the students to
know when those required classes will be offered – especially those once a year classes. Currently, there is
no easy way for the students or even student services personnel to access that information. Students may
expect a class to be offered in the Spring and it is not offered until the next Fall – this causes them to
remain at the College longer, or leave, and increases student frustration.
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods should develop a master two-year schedule
outlining which semester classes will be offered over two years. The classes which are offered
only once a year should be noted in the catalog and the semester that they are offered should be
noted as well.
Currently, the development of the schedule of classes is extremely fluid. The College of the Redwoods
needs to develop a more rigid process for changing classes after entry into the computer system. The
College needs to establish a formal process for making changes after the date of entry. Currently, the
schedule is continuously changed, necessitating many changes in the computer system which in turn
means more proofing cycles. At this time, basically anyone can make a change to the proposed class
schedule or any component. The College should implement a signature approval process after the entry
date. Changes can only be made by a form which is signed by the correct individual. For example, changes
to the time or room for a section would have to have a signature of the academic dean, and an addition or
deletion of a section would need the signature of the vice president of instruction.
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods should develop a formal signature approval
system for making changes to a “final” schedule after it has been entered into the College’s
computer system. Changes could then only be made to the schedule via approval of the academic
deans and the vice president.
A student services issue for the College is who notifies the students when a class is cancelled. Currently, it
appears to be a hit and miss process – some academic areas contact students, some do not, students
services tries to contact students if they know, and some are never contacted. The College needs to develop
a formal process for notifying students of cancelled class. Typically, student services is notified of a
cancelled class and they then notify the students that the class is cancelled and work with the students to
fill that component of their schedule. Student services is usually the best area to work with students since
they can make immediate changes over the phone to a student’s schedule of classes.
Recommendation: Create a formal student notification process as to cancellations of sections
administered by student services.
CLARUS Corporation Page 10 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Another issue that should be addressed in the schedule development process is the involvement of
additional people, not just academics, in the process. The student services arm of the College is the
interface with the student during the registration process. Valuable information can be gleaned from the
personnel in student services as to what were the key issues they faced with students registering for a
schedule the last semester. This information should be shared in a formal session with the academic
decision makers for the schedule process.
Recommendation: Develop a pre-schedule conference that would provide input for the
academic coordinators about issues seen by student services personnel regarding the schedule of
classes the previous semester when they were registering students for classes. This conference is
for information only to the academic areas, and should focus on new courses needed, priorities
for scheduling, class times, and other issues pertinent for the academic coordinators to know
prior to developing an upcoming semester schedule.
CLARUS Corporation Page 11 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Analysis And Recommendations CLARUS Corporation Page 12 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Data Requirements
After reviewing the major issues in schedule development at the College of the Redwoods, four areas appear
to be of major concern at the College in schedule development – cancellation, schedule efficiency, room
utilization, and curriculum scheduling. For many of these areas, anecdotal information was provided as
issues. The College cancels classes required for graduation. The College may be scheduling too many classes.
The College may be offering too many general education courses, diluting enrollments. The campus is packed
full during peak fill times. Courses are not scheduled to allow students to finish curriculum. Are these
statements fact or fiction? The data analysis for the College of the Redwoods will examine these issues to
determine the reality and which are myths.
Much of the data needed to analyze the project goals had already been collected by the College of the
Redwoods and was archived at the College. It was imperative to have access to the last four years of
scheduling data and for the College of the Redwoods to have the ability to download the schedule data into a
csv file format according to the file specification to be provided by CLARUS Corporation. CLARUS
Corporation asked the College of the Redwoods to download four years of census scheduling data by semester
(each semester constitutes a file) into a csv file format that included the following information for every
section offered at every location of the College:

Class title, division, class subject, class number/ suffix, site, class ID, class status, room description,
building name, room cap, instructor, meeting days, start date, end date, start time, end time, credit
hours, enrollment, enrollment cap, instructor contact hours, component code, instructor class
description, program type, credit/ noncredit, instructor mode, instructor load, instructor ID, section
revenue, section expense, semester, year, unique course identifier, cross-listed courses, cancel date,
class enrollment status
CLARUS Corporation worked with the institutional research staff in developing the databases needed to
complete the goals for the research project. The College electronically downloaded all semester files (as of
census date) from Fall 2005 to Spring 2010 on April 14, 2010.
Curriculum information was also needed for the Scheduling Scan. The College provided a current catalog
(2009-2010) that contains the curriculum requirements for the programs offered at the College. The
programs listed in the 2009-2010 catalog were the programs examined in the curriculum analysis.
Utilizing the academic analysis software ClassTracks, CLARUS Corporation analyzed the schedule data
across the College to determine:

Cancellation rates for the College, divisions and sites

Efficiency of the current courses and sections being offered by the College, divisions and sites

Utilization of the classrooms across the College

Effectiveness of the scheduling of curriculum across semesters for all programming and general
education courses
CLARUS Corporation Page 13 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Cancellation Analysis Cancellation of sections was noted as a problem for the College with major impacts on room availability,
student scheduling, enrollments, student service personnel, and academic services. Scheduling a section
blocks a room for use – and cancelling the section at the last minute ensures that the room will not be used
during the semester – a major impact on room availability. When students are trying to build their schedules,
cancelled classes cause the students to continually come back to the College and try to find a comparable or
“fill” for a cancelled section – a class the student may not want or need. But the ultimate impact of cancelled
classes is on enrollments – after a class is cancelled, the likelihood of the student enrolling in another class is
greatly diminished. Many students today are also registering later in the semester, increasing the workload
on student services immediately prior to semester start, and by cancelling classes, displaced students add to
the current congestion in student services. Cancellations also cause a major impact on academic services –
full-time faculty may have to change schedules, adjuncts that were “hired” have to be contacted, and
independent studies may increase, adding to faculty loads.
The more sections cancelled in a semester, the better the indication that the College is not being responsive to
the needs of students. The Cancellation Evaluation examined patterns of cancellation at the College from Fall
2006 to Spring 2010, concentrating on the Fall and Spring sessions for each year. The cancelled classes were
examined for the entire College by semester, location (site plus off-site locations), by division, by discipline,
by course, and by section to determine if there are cancellation patterns causing schedule inconsistencies. All
of the detailed tabular results for the Cancellation Evaluation are presented in Appendix A.
Chart 1. Cancellation Patterns By Semester, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Sections Cancelled 80
12
87
22
84
2
53
23
103
5
166
58
172
137
Total Sections 936
44
896
116
912
31
919
143
959
44
1104
274
1199
1106
Cancellation Rate 8.5% 27.3% 9.7% 19.0% 9.2% 6.5% 5.8% 16.1% 10.7% 11.4% 15.0% 21.2% 14.3% 12.4% College. As seen in Chart 1 above, the cancellation rate dropped below 10 percent in 2007-2008 in the Fall
and Spring semesters, but has increased over the last two years and is above 10 percent. The goal for
community colleges is to cancel less than 10 percent of the sections offered and the College of the Redwoods
should be below a 10 percent cancellation for credit courses (cancellations above 10 percent are noted in red
in Chart 1). In Fall 2006, the College of the Redwoods cancelled 80 out of 936 sections, resulting in a
cancellation rate of 8.5 percent. In Fall 2008, the College cancelled 103 out of 959 total sections, resulting in a
cancellation rate of 10.7 percent. By Fall 2009, the College’s cancellation rate was 14.3 percent – the College
cancelled 172 of 1,199 total sections. The Winter and Summer sessions at the College of the Redwoods should
CLARUS Corporation Page 14 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 also be examined – these sessions consistently run above 10 percent cancellation and even into 20 percent
cancellation. (For detailed results of cancellation by semester, see Appendix A, Table 1.)
Chart 2. Cancellation Patterns By Site, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Arcata 12.1 50.0 11.1 20.0 8.8 0.0 0.0 7.7 22.2 0.0 7.3 15.0 16.7 18.8 Del Norte + Off‐
site 11.8 33.3 6.1 15.4 13.3 50.0 4.9 8.3 11.0 100.0 15.7 25.0 7.9 7.3 Eureka Downtown Eureka Eureka Off‐site Klamath‐
Trinity 14.3
0.0
0.0
50.0
11.1
0.0
0.0
16.7
7.1
0.0
23.0
35.6
22.4
49.2
7.3
18.5
9.7
15.2
8.2
4.8
5.1
7.9
9.0
0.0
15.1
22.3
11.6
9.3
38.1
33.3
33.3
42.9
18.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
25.0
0.0
25.0
0.0
45.0
0.0
13.3
0.0
14.3
0.0
18.5
0.0
17.9
0.0
14.8
0.0
12.9
23.5
26.2
28.2
Mendocino McKinleyville Virtual Coast + Campus Off‐site 4.3 50.0 8.3 33.3 7.6 0.0 12.7 54.2 14.1 0.0 16.7 13.0 26.1 8.0 35.3 31.8 6.3
50.0
10.0
16.7
10.3
0.0
0.0
13.3
6.5
21.4
7.9
10.0
1.4
3.0
Site. The cancellation rates for the major sites of the College of the Redwoods are presented in Chart 2
(cancellations above 10 percent are noted in red). While the majority of the sites were combined with their
off-site locations, the cancellation rates by semester for the Eureka Campus are shown separately from the
Eureka Off-Campus. Cancellation rates for the Eureka Campus were below 10 percent in Fall 2006, Fall
2007, and Fall 2008, but began to increase in Fall 2009 to more than 10 percent. The same trend was seen
for the Spring semesters for the Eureka Campus – Spring 2007 and 2008 were below the recommended 10
percent – but in Spring 2009 the cancellation rate jumped to 15 percent but had dropped back below 10
percent (nine percent) by Spring 2010.
Examining the average cancellation rates for the Fall and Spring semesters, only the Eureka Campus, the
McKinleyville Campus, and the Virtual Campus have had cancellations lower than 10 percent. The
cancellation rate on average for the Fall semesters for the Eureka Campus was 9.3 percent and for the Spring
semesters it was 9.8 percent. The average cancellation rate for the McKinleyville Campus for the Fall
semesters was 8.8 percent and for the Spring semesters it was 7.95 percent. The Virtual Campus had the
lowest cancellation rates on average for the Fall semesters at 6.1 percent and for Spring with 5.2 percent.
The other off-sites all had cancellation rates above 10 percent for their Fall and Spring averages. Eureka OffCampus had the highest cancellation rates on average – 32 percent for the Fall semesters and 15 percent for
the Spring semesters. Klamath-Trinity averaged over 18 percent cancellation of sections for Fall and Spring
semesters. The Mendocino Coast and off-campus at Mendocino Coast also had a cancellation rate higher
than 10 percent – 13 percent for the Fall semesters and 11 percent for the Spring semesters. Eureka
Downtown also had a cancellation rate above 10 percent for the Fall and Spring semesters on average – 14
percent for the Fall semesters and 18 percent for the Spring semesters. The Fall cancellation average for
Arcata was 15 percent but the Spring cancellation average was 9.3 percent. The same pattern was seen for the
Del Norte Center and Del Norte Off-Campus – 11 percent of sections were cancelled on average for the Fall
CLARUS Corporation Page 15 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 semesters and only 8.5 percent for the Spring semesters. (For detailed results, see Appendix A, Tables 1-A
through 1-J.)
Chart 3. Cancellation Patterns By Division, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
ALSS Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 ATHPE 5.5 42.9 2.8 16.7 3.3 33.3 2.0 11.1 2.6 50.0 5.8 12.8 12.7 13.3 BTECH 1.7 25.0 4.3 33.3 18.9 0.0 9.6 18.2 15.2 0.0 20.9 40.9 2.8 13.6 12.5
36.4
15.1
31.3
12.2
0.0
4.4
20.7
9.6
5.6
14.7
36.2
19.1
15.6
HCMM 8.1
0.0
7.8
14.3
5.7
0.0
5.9
4.3
8.1
0
9.9
18.9
7.7
14.2
HOCC 0.0
0.0
2.9
0.0
7.9
0.0
0.0
0.0
2.8
50.0
9.1
20.0
2.4
0.0
MSE 7.9 16.7 9.9 13.0 10.1 0.0 7.5 9.7 19.0 0.0 16.6 7.0 7.1 7.8 PSC 32.3 25.0 24.0 18.2 8.0 0.0 6.1 0.0 7.7 16.7 0.0 16.7 12.5 2.8 SLSS 9.3
0.0
19.5
0.0
15.2
0.0
12.5
88.9
21.6
100.0
40.2
20.0
35.6
17.9
Division. Chart 3 presents the cancellation patterns for each division at the College of the Redwoods from
Fall 2006 to Summer 2010 (cancellations above 10 percent are noted in red). The majority of the divisions
shown above all have cancellations above 10 percent for the Fall and Spring semesters, with the exception of
ALSS (Arts/ Language/ Social Studies) whose cancellation rate is six percent or below, HCMM (Humanities
and Communications) with a cancellation rate below 10 percent, and HOCC (Health Occupations) with a
cancellation rate of only three percent. The other divisions – ATHPE (Physical Education), BTECH (Business
and Technical), MSE (Math, Science and Engineering), PSC (Public Service), and SLSS (Student Life) all had
cancellation rates above 10 percent. (For detailed results, see Appendix A, Tables 2-A through 2-H.)
Chart 4. Courses With 50 Percent Or More Cancellation Of Sections For All College,
Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Course Total Sections Cancelled Total Sections Offered Percent Of Sections Cancelled AG 11: Sustainable Animal Production 1 1 100.00% AJ 88B: Basic Academy Preparation 1 1 100.00% ART 20: Illustration 1 1 100.00% ART 47: Etching Techniques 1 1 100.00% ASTRO 99A: Current Issues in Astronomy 1 1 100.00% BT 63: Desktop Publishing Application 1 1 100.00% BT 88: Experimental Course in Bus Tech 1 1 100.00% BUS 33: International Business 1 1 100.00% BUS 81A: Individual Income Tax Law 1 1 100.00% BUS 81B: Corporate Partnership Income Tax Law 1 1 100.00% BUS 82L: Volunteer Income Tax Assistance 3 3 100.00% CLARUS Corporation Page 16 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Course April 2010 Total Sections Cancelled Total Sections Offered Percent Of Sections Cancelled CINE 8: Screenwriting 1 1 100.00% CR 119P: Reporting Procedures Research 1 1 100.00% CR 119R: CSR‐RPR Examination review 1 1 100.00% DHET 166: Theory Operation of Ag Equipment 1 1 100.00% DHET 40: Individual Study Diesel Heavy Equipment 1 1 100.00% DM 75B: 2‐D Animation II 1 1 100.00% DT 63: Mechanical Design Drafting 2 2 100.00% DT 81: 3‐D Character Modeling Animation 1 1 100.00% ECE 10LB4: Field Placement School‐Age Child Care 2 2 100.00% ECE 15: School‐Age Children In Child Care 1 1 100.00% ENGL 10: Introduction to Classical Literature 1 1 100.00% ENGR 99: Selected Topics in Engineering 4 4 100.00% FRNC 8A: Elementary Conversational French I 1 1 100.00% GEOL 130G: Coastal Geology 1 1 100.00% GEOL 99: Selected Topics in Geology 2 2 100.00% GEOL 99B: Geology of Centerville Scotia 1 1 100.00% GERM 11A: Begin Conversational German I 2 2 100.00% GS 1: College Success 5 5 100.00% JPN 8A: Elementary Conversation Japanese I 2 2 100.00% NAS 13: Native Cultures NW California 1 1 100.00% NR 68: Introduction to ARCGIS 2 2 100.00% PE 14: Defensive Tactics 1 1 100.00% PE 43: Aquatic Fitness 1 1 100.00% PE 60: Foundations of Recreational Studies 1 1 100.00% PSYCH 20: Biological Psychology 1 1 100.00% RE 12: Real Estate Law 2 2 100.00% WT 67: Special Welding Laboratory 1 1 100.00% GUID 111: Extended Orientation 7 8 87.50% ART 14: Gallery Exhibition Portfolio Development 3 4 75.00% BUS 150B: Business Vocabulary 3 4 75.00% POLSC 12: State Local Politics 3 4 75.00% BT 162: Machine Transcription 8 11 72.70% BT 114: Medical Office Practice 7 10 70.00% DHET 69: Heavy Equipment Machine Practices 2 3 66.70% DM 22: Electronic Publishing 2 3 66.70% FS 199: Fire Science Advanced Training 2 3 66.70% PE 44: Water Polo 4 6 66.70% 18 28 64.30% BT 92: Introduction to MS Word 3 5 60.00% DT 32: Civil Design Drafting 3 5 60.00% GUID 112: Freshman Seminar CLARUS Corporation Page 17 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Course April 2010 Total Sections Cancelled Total Sections Offered Percent Of Sections Cancelled OCEAN 40: Individual Study in Oceanography 7 12 58.30% AG 3: Introduction to Animal Science 1 2 50.00% AG 30: Introduction to Ag Business Economics AJ 88A: Introduction to Natural Resource Law Enforcement 1 2 50.00% 1 2 50.00% ANTH 2: Introduction to Archaeology 2 4 50.00% ANTH 99: Select Topics Anthropology 1 2 50.00% ART 3B: Intermediate Sculpture 1 2 50.00% ASTRO 99B: Seminar Current Issues in Astronomy 1 2 50.00% AT 18: Auto Engine Repair 2 4 50.00% BT 158: Intensive Filing Practice 8 16 50.00% BUS 150S: Spelling 1 2 50.00% CIS 20: Program With Data Structures 1 2 50.00% CR 124: Touch Shorthand Theory 1 2 50.00% CR 124L: Touch Shorthand Theory ‐ Lab 1 2 50.00% CR 126L: Court Reporting Computer Application Lab 1 2 50.00% DANCE 34: Dance Fundamentals 1 2 50.00% DM 30: Interactive Media 2 4 50.00% DM 70B: Photoshop II 1 2 50.00% ECE 10LB1: Field Placement Early Intervention Set ECE 10LB2: Field Placement Infant Toddler Early Education 1 2 50.00% 1 2 50.00% ECE 11: Infant‐Toddler Care Education 2 4 50.00% ENGL 22: Greek Mythology 2 4 50.00% FOR 60: Forest Protection and Ecology 2 4 50.00% GUID 109: Values and Ethics 3 6 50.00% HRC 11: Professional Baking I 3 6 50.00% HRC 21: Professional Baking II 2 4 50.00% IT 60B: Machine Parts Blueprint Reading 1 2 50.00% IT 62: Technical Mathematics 1 2 50.00% MT 12: Advanced Manufacturing Technology 2 4 50.00% MUS 42: Music Ensemble 1 2 50.00% MUS 66: Pep Band 1 2 50.00% PE 31: Jazz Dance 1 2 50.00% PE 32: Power Circuit 1 2 50.00% PHYSC 10: Introduction to Physical Science 6 12 50.00% PSYCH 2: Research Methods in Psychology 1 2 50.00% RE 13: Real Estate Finance 2 4 50.00% SNLAN 1: Introduction to Sign Language 1 2 50.00% SNLAN 88A: Experimental Course Sign Language 1 2 50.00% CLARUS Corporation Page 18 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Course. The College must understand whether there are consistent cancellations of courses at the College of
the Redwoods. Consistent cancelling of a course or a majority of the sections of a course offered makes it very
difficult for students to complete their programming. Chart 4 presents courses most likely to cancel at the
College of the Redwoods. Column one of the table lists the course name. Column two, Total Sections
Cancelled, presents the number of sections that were cancelled from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. Column three,
Total Sections Offered, provides the number of sections offered from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. The final
column, Percent Of Sections Cancelled, provides the percentage of sections that were cancelled from all
sections offered from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. Chart 4 presents the courses which had a 50 percent
cancellation or greater of sections for the Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 time frame. (For detailed results of
courses for all college and by site, see Appendix A, Table 3 and Tables 3-A through 3-J and for courses
cancelled by division see Appendix A, Tables 4-A through 4-H.)
As seen in Chart 4, the majority of the courses only offered one or two sections and these were cancelled from
Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. However, GUID 112: Freshman Seminar had 18 sections cancelled in this time
frame, with more than 50 percent of the total sections cancelled. Several of the courses had five or more of the
sections offered from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 cancelled, resulting in a 50 percent or more cancellation rate
for the courses and those courses included: GS 1: College Success, GUID 111: Extended Orientation, BT 162:
Machine Transcription, BT 114: Medical Office Practice, OCEAN 40: Independent Study in Oceanography,
BT 158: Intensive Filing Practice, and PHYSC 10: Intro to Physical Science.
Examining the course cancellations from Fall 2005 to Spring 2010, 39 courses offered by the College have
100 percent of the sections cancel. Fifty-three percent (442 courses) of the 827 total courses offered by the
College did not have any cancelled sections but 47 percent (385 courses) have at least one cancelled section
during the time frame noted above.
Chart 5. Sample Of Section Cancellation Patterns By Course For BT 158, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Section. Chart 5 provides an example of the analysis that was conducted by section for each course at the
College of the Redwoods. For each course offered from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010, the time of each of the
sections offered is listed by noting the section’s fill rate. A cancelled section is indicated by a red circle next to
a 0 percentage. If a section was active, a percentage fill rate is presented. The fill rate is defined as the
percentage of students enrolled given the class cap (or maximum students allowed in the section). In other
words, as seen in line one of Chart 5, for Fall 2006, Spring 2007, and Fall 2007, an online section (00:0000:00) of BT 158 cancelled, and the Spring 2008 section offered had a five percent fill rate – 1 student
enrolled of a maximum 20 allowed. The other benefit of Chart 5 is that it provides excellent trend information
CLARUS Corporation Page 19 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 for the sections offered. It quickly shows none of the sections offered filled above 40 percent. But examining
all the sections, too many sections of BT 158 have been offered. The major issue is that this course is required
for the BT AS Office Professional and the BUS Certificate of Achievement, Medical Office Business Skills
(Mendocino). If a student is trying to complete these degrees, based on the pattern of cancellations for the
sections presented above, it would have been extremely difficult to complete these degrees over the last four
years. It is likely that this course should either be revamped or deleted from the curriculum. (A complete set
of analyses for all courses by section by campus is presented in Appendix A, Tables 5-A through 5-J, all
college Appendix A, Table 6, and by division in Appendix A, Tables 6-A through 6-H.)
Examining the detailed section information indicates that many sections are offered frequently and they
consistently cancel, adding to the high cancellation rate for the College of the Redwoods. Also, there appears
to be too much capacity for many of the courses each semester – too many courses offered, which dilutes the
enrollment in each section, reducing the efficiency of the section. Each division should examine their
individual courses for these patterns.
Chart 6. Fall 2009 Section Cancellations By Date Of Cancellation
y
01/06/10
10/01/09
09/22/09
09/17/09
09/10/09
08/31/09
08/24/09
08/20/09
08/18/09
Dates
08/14/09
08/12/09
08/10/09
08/06/09
07/30/09
07/28/09
07/24/09
07/22/09
07/20/09
07/15/09
07/13/09
07/09/09
06/08/09
05/20/09
05/05/09
03/26/09
0
5
10
15
20
25
Cancellation Dates. The date a class is cancelled can have major impacts on students. The earlier a class is
cancelled, the more opportunity they have to find another class that fits their schedule. The closer to the
semester start date that classes are cancelled, the more disruption to the students and the College. The
number of sections cancelled by date in Fall 2009 are presented in Chart 6. The College cancelled 172 total
sections in Fall 2009. As seen in the graphic in Chart 6, sections were continuously cancelled from May 2009
until the first day of classes on August 27, 2009 for the Fall semester. The issue with the cancellations from
May to July 2009 is that students may be impacted multiple times with respect to their schedule. One month
prior to the start of classes, almost half of the cancelled sections had already been cancelled.
CLARUS Corporation Page 20 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 7. Spring 2010 Section Cancellations By Date Of Cancellation
02/12/10
01/26/10
01/19/10
01/12/10
01/07/10
12/30/09
12/17/09
Dates
12/15/09
11/24/09
11/17/09
11/12/09
11/09/09
11/05/09
11/03/09
10/22/09
10/09/09
10/06/09
10/01/09
09/29/09
0
20
40
60
80
The cancellations for Spring 2010 by date is presented in Chart 7. In Spring 2010, the College improved their
cancellation rate – they only cancelled 136 total sections. As seen above, the College changed their
cancellation policy from Fall 2009 to Spring 2010 and the College made a mass cancellation of sections once
– a month prior to the start of classes – rather than continually cancelling classes during the registration
period. This actually causes less disruption to students since they have to adjust their schedule only once,
rather than multiple times during a semester. In Spring 2010, the College also improved the number of
sections cancelled after semester start. (For a complete listing of the sections cancelled by date for each
semester, please see Appendix A, Table 7.)
Recommendations For Cancellation After reviewing the cancellation data contained in Appendix A, several issues that had been raised as
concerns among the personnel at the College of the Redwoods were in fact reality. Examining the last four
years of data, one finds that the same sections are continuously cancelled. In some cases, courses need to be
examined for relevancy to program areas since they consistently cancel. Each academic area must use
relevant historical data and current input to determine sections most likely to make.
Recommendation: The College should set a goal of less than 10 percent cancellation rate for
credit programming for the College. The College will provide to all scheduling decision makers
easy-to-use trend information for scheduling. The data has been limited and it has not been easy for
the academic coordinators to use it in the scheduling process. Trend data is needed on a by section
basis during the planning process. Examining the historical trends will ensure that the same
sections are not scheduled and cancelled for multiple semesters in a row.
Recommendation: After examining the trend data, the divisions will develop an initial schedule
based on the sections that made the previous semester and will not include or add the sections that
were deleted the previous semester. The College should use two rules of thumb regarding
scheduling a section that has previously cancelled – one for a single section of a course and one for
multiple sections of a course. For a single section of a course that cancelled last semester, the College
CLARUS Corporation Page 21 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 should wait at least a semester prior to offering the section again. If the single section has cancelled
the last two semesters offered, wait at least a year to offer the section of the course. If the single
section continues to cancel, evaluate the relevancy of the course to the program or transfer
curriculum. For a course with multiple sections that has cancelled sections, evaluate the course
efficiency. In other words, is the College offering too many sections spread over too many
timeframes? Add up the number of seats filled, divided by the number of seats per section, and
reduce the number of sections offered. If only two sections are offered, rotate the section morning
and evening for the next two semesters.
Prior to starting the scheduling process, the academic coordinators need input into the scheduling process.
The student services personnel interact with students and hear concerns and issues regarding the scheduling
process – in fact, the personnel in student services typically have to help solve scheduling issues. It would be
beneficial for the College to develop a pre-schedule conference between the academic coordinators
responsible for scheduling and the student services personnel responsible for assisting students in the
registration process.
Recommendation: Create a pre-schedule conference early in the schedule development process for
an upcoming semester, or immediately after the registration period for a semester, to provide input
into the scheduling process to the academic coordinators. The student services personnel involved in
assisting students during the registration process should provide input to the academic coordinators
on the issues, concerns, and successes experienced by students during the registration process. Issues
that can be addressed may be new courses needed, priorities for scheduling (times and days),
number of developmental students and levels tested into, etc.
Cancellations make major impacts on a College’s schedule. First, cancellations effectively end up blocking
rooms that are needed at the start of the scheduling process, and examining the cancellations for the College
of the Redwoods, a large percentage of the cancelled classes were scheduled between 8am and Noon – key
times needed for classes at the College. Unless these rooms are reassigned for a late start class, the College
decreases the utilization of rooms and buildings on campus. Second, cancellations impact curriculum. If a
course is continually cancelled, it has a major impact on the students’ ability to complete a curricula, and
ultimately the College’s retention and graduation rates. If courses continuously cancel, the courses may need
to be removed from the curriculum and other courses of more relevance added. Finally, cancellations impact
the efficiency of the College. If the College offers too many sections of a course, or offers the sections too
frequently for the population of students, it will decrease the overall efficiency of the College. The College
needs to determine if fewer sections of a course are needed in the upcoming schedule.
Recommendation: Each program area should review the courses in their area with cancellation
rates over 50 percent and determine if fewer courses are needed in the upcoming schedule, and make
adjustments as needed.
CLARUS Corporation Page 22 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Efficiency Analysis
After lowering the College’s cancellation rate, the next step in building an efficient class schedule is to attempt
to minimize the actual number of sections offered and fill each section to maximum capacity. This increases
overall productivity of the College, opens up new rooms for additional classes and sections, and typically
saves money by reducing adjunct cost, especially when adjuncts are difficult to find.
Efficiency is measured by the fill rate for the section. Fill rate is defined by dividing the number of students
enrolled in the section by the student enrollment cap placed on the section (not the room cap or maximum
physical seats). For example, if a section has an enrollment cap of 20 and 10 students enrolled, the fill rate is
50 percent. In other words, the section is filling half of the seats. Each section offered at the College was
examined from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. Only the Fall and Spring semesters were focused on in the
efficiency analysis – Winter and Summer data is available but will not be the focus of this analysis. Efficiency
was measured for the entire College by semester, by site, by division, and by course. The goal for the efficiency
is to minimize the number of sections while increasing enrollments in each section.
Chart 8. Course Efficiency For All College, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Percent Seats Filled Census Date Average Course Size Census Date Percent Seats Filled End Semester Date Average Course Size End Semester Date 68.9
61.3
65.0
51.3
73.6
54.2
67.8
56.6
73.2
54.0
68.7
57.0
70.4
67.6
21.1
18.3
21.4
16.3
22.3
15.7
21.1
18.2
22.6
16.7
21.1
15.0
21.7
21.1
59.6
51.4
56.0
44.1
63.5
49.1
59.2
52.8
66.8
53.9
61.2
53.1
63.0
17.9 15.4 18.1 14.5 19.4 14.4 18.0 17.1 19.3 15.6 18.0 14.2 18.8 College. The course efficiency for the College of the Redwoods by semester for the census date and the end
of the semester is presented in Chart 8. The average percent seats filled from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 has
declined in the last couple of years – the College has become less efficient in filling the seats offered. In Fall
2007 and Fall 2008, the average fill rate at census was 73 percent. In other words, of the seats available at
census for active sections, 73 percent of the seats were filled. By Fall 2009, the average fill rate was 70
percent. Examining the Spring semesters, the fill rate at census has been between 67 and 68 percent. Overall,
a college should see fill rates of more than 70 to 75 percent for the primary semesters at census date, and in
today’s market with high enrollments, many colleges are seeing census fill rates of more than 85 percent.
Examining the end of semester fill rates, the fill rates drop to below 60 percent for the Fall and Spring
semesters – more than a 10 percent drop.
CLARUS Corporation Page 23 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 The average course size at census has varied little between Fall 2006 and Spring 2010 – ranging from a low of
15 students in Summer 2009 to a high of 22.3 in Fall 2007. The average course size for the end of semester
has also remained consistent from semester to semester – with a low of 14.2 students in Summer 2009 to a
high of 19.4 students in Fall 2007. On average, at census for Fall and Spring semesters, 20 to 22 students are
enrolled in the courses but by end of semester, the average course size has dropped below 20 students per
course. (For complete detail by discipline for each semester on the fill rates at the College, please see
Appendix B, Table A.)
Chart 9. Course Efficiency By Site, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Percent Seats Filled Arcata 78.7 40.0 77.2 61.2 74.4 82.9 74.2 57.7 75.8 57.1 66.7 39.0 78.8 77.9 Del Norte + Off‐
site 70.7 51.4 62.3 49.4 66.9 62.5 62.0 62.7 70.3 73.0 51.7 75.0 69.6 Eureka Downtown Eureka Eureka Off‐site Klamath‐
Trinity 63.8
94.0
63.4
100.0
80.9
36.7
51.4
44.5
71.0
63.8
61.2
46.3
64.7
62.9
71.5
47.4
66.8
44.6
77.1
48.0
69.8
56.4
80.9
56.6
70.3
55.6
74.3
72.4
47.0
80.0
54.6
17.5
39.6
51.7
45.9
81.0
49.9
57.5
30.0
60.6
30.4
58.5
28.1
58.6
58.8
64.2
75.5
0.0
52.6
57.2
52.6
70.9
Mendocino McKinleyville Virtual Coast + Campus Off‐site 48.2 62.0 52.3 65.3 48.5 91.4 61.1 40.0 57.6 72.2 45.6 60.1 73.2 52.7 66.7 76.3
90.0
73.9
57.9
74.4
75.3
78.0
69.5
82.2
58.3
79.5
74.1
71.7
82.7
Site. Chart 9 presents the course efficiency by site at census date for the College of the Redwoods from Fall
2006 to Spring 2010. Overall, the Arcata site has been the most efficient from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 –
exhibiting a higher fill rate than the main campus in Eureka. Overall, the Arcata site has seen fill rates in the
Fall semesters of 75 percent or more and in the Spring semesters the fill rate has been over 60 percent (with
73 percent in Spring 2009 and 70 percent in Spring 2010). The Eureka Campus also has experienced course
fill rates of more than 70 percent in the Fall semesters and more than 65 percent in the Spring semesters. The
trend for the Eureka Campus has been increasing from over the last four years in the Spring semesters, and
the Fall semesters have remained fairly steady over the last four years with respect to fill rate. The Del Norte
and Del Norte off-site have also been almost as efficient as the Eureka Campus in the Fall and Spring
semesters, as seen in Chart 9, with fill rates running over 70 percent in the Fall semesters (except for Fall
2007) and the fill rates in the Spring semesters running over 60 percent – as seen with the Eureka Campus,
the fill rates for the Del Norte Center has been increasing in the Spring semester over the last four years.
Unfortunately, the other sites have seen fill rates running below 50 percent for some semesters. Over the last
year, the fill rates have increased for the other sites.
The fill rates for the virtual campus have been strong from Fall 2006. In fact, in Spring 2010, the virtual
campus actually had the highest fill rate at 82.7 percent for census date enrollments. The fill rates for the
virtual campus have been more than 70 percent for the Fall and Spring semesters. (For complete detail by
site for each semester on the fill rates at the College, please see Appendix B, Tables A-1 through A-9.)
CLARUS Corporation Page 24 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 10. Fill Rates For Disciplines From Fall 2006 To Spring 2010,
Ranked From Most Efficient To Least Efficient By Spring 2010
Percent Seats Filled ALSS ATHPE BTECH HCMM HOCC MSE PSC SLSS Fall 2009 71.0 61.1 69.1
75.2
87.1
68.4 95.2 61.1
Spring 2010 71.4 70.5 70.1
76.4
73.4
74.8 8.6 56.3
Division. Chart 10 presents the course efficiency by division at census date for the College of the Redwoods
for Fall 2009 and Spring 2010. Overall, the Public Service (PSC) division has seen the highest fill rate of all
the divisions at the College in the last year – 95 percent in Fall 2009 – but classes had not met yet in Spring
2010 when the data were collected. The Health Occupations (HOCC) division also has a consistently high fill
rate in the last year – 87 percent fill rate in Fall 2009 and 73 percent in Spring 2010. The Student Life (SLSS)
and the Physical Education (ATHPE) divisions have seen the lowest fill rates in the last year. Overall, each
division should set a goal of at least a 75 percent fill rate each semester. (For complete detail for each
divisions’ fill rates for Summer 2009, Fall 2009 and Spring 2010, please see Appendix B, Tables B-1 through
B-8.)
Chart 11. Fill Rates For Disciplines From Fall 2006 To Spring 2010,
Ranked From Most Efficient To Least Efficient By Spring 2010
Percent Seats Filled Discipline SPCH WT CET CHEM BIOL NAS LVN ENVSC PHIL HE HO GEOL DA OCEAN PSYCH ASTRO ECE ANTH GEOG HIST AT PHYS Fall 2006 Spring 2007 Fall 2007 Spring 2008 86.50% 115.00% 82.30% 100.00% 83.20%
105.00%
85.70%
97.00%
105.00%
87.20%
82.50%
70.40%
80.30%
59.00%
78.00%
62.50%
76.00%
70.20%
62.60%
44.70%
75.20%
92.10%
58.20%
68.00%
64.00%
71.20%
97.50%
72.90%
60.60% 79.80% 76.00% 87.10% 89.40% 88.40% 90.60% 73.80% 72.90% 79.70% 52.80% 84.70% 84.90% 56.30% 82.00% 85.00% 81.50% 55.00% 56.90% CLARUS Corporation 64.60% 80.20% 80.50% 80.00% 66.80% 73.00% 53.40% 85.00% 67.80% 64.90% 75.00% 74.30% 85.60% 45.80% 69.10% 80.90% 65.10% 58.40% 43.80% 77.90%
87.70%
72.20%
90.70%
82.70%
78.60%
74.40%
79.60%
57.90%
75.30%
40.20%
87.60%
93.40%
60.20%
79.60%
67.60%
75.70%
93.30%
108.30%
Fall 2008 94.70%
102.50%
70.00%
76.70%
89.40%
66.30%
91.10%
80.40%
83.80%
90.60%
79.10%
85.60%
86.60%
58.90%
84.00%
81.90%
81.90%
76.00%
86.10%
91.70%
65.80%
Spring 2009 94.90% 95.80% 90.00% 85.10% 89.60% 49.20% 85.80% 80.10% 80.70% 66.70% 86.70% 60.60% 77.20% 40.90% 74.90% 67.40% 77.40% 65.00% 53.00% 80.50% 102.50% 64.60% Fall 2009 92.10% 93.00% 86.70% 81.80% 88.50% 59.50% 90.80% 71.60% 72.60% 75.30% 85.60% 85.20% 89.50% 75.30% 77.20% 82.50% 69.80% 67.20% 60.20% 77.50% 85.00% 63.50% Spring 2010 99.10%
97.90%
96.70%
94.20%
89.80%
89.70%
87.60%
86.80%
86.60%
85.30%
84.40%
84.20%
83.80%
83.60%
83.60%
83.40%
81.80%
81.70%
78.80%
78.60%
78.00%
77.50%
Page 25 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Percent Seats Filled Discipline WAT LIBR BT ENGL SPAN ART CIS ADCT SOC ECON CT GERM GUID SNLAN CINE JOURN POLSC AG DM PE MT JPN PHYSC BUS FNR METEO GS IT MUS MA MATH DHET READ DANCE HRC RE FRNC ENGR DT DRAMA NURS Fall 2006 Spring 2007 45.90% 81.70% 79.30% 69.50% 66.40% 62.80% 71.40% 67.90% 63.50% Spring 2008 42.60% 70.40% 72.50% 64.10% 60.20% 77.90% 68.20% 71.10% 65.20% 22.80% 51.50% 72.20% 50.80% 72.30% 86.70% 87.50% 52.50% 80.00% 74.50% 59.30% 71.20% 67.70% 63.50% 48.00% 52.70% 35.80% 41.70% 103.30% 39.30% 104.50% 62.50% 65.80% 71.80% 54.50% 88.30% 76.90% 48.90% 36.20% 56.90% 56.80% 52.40% 57.90% 56.90% 70.10% 69.70% 56.70% 64.60% 93.80% 76.70% 64.00% 68.20% 57.80% 64.40% 90.00% 53.30% 66.70% 50.60% 38.40% 61.60% 43.80% 46.40% 83.60% 85.80% CLARUS Corporation Fall 2007 Fall 2008 43.00%
77.20%
81.20%
63.10%
68.60%
93.80%
80.60%
88.00%
73.90%
110.70%
47.80%
61.80%
69.40%
102.50%
68.50%
68.10%
64.00%
57.40%
65.00%
43.70%
70.70%
73.30%
68.80%
71.70%
66.20%
73.70%
77.90%
75.60%
78.60%
32.20%
75.50%
76.00%
95.00%
71.30%
65.50%
60.60%
46.40%
41.30%
67.90%
67.90%
54.20%
74.60%
78.60%
75.50%
86.60%
83.70%
79.00%
72.00%
85.90%
87.50%
111.80%
84.70%
73.30%
102.50%
75.70%
70.20%
78.10%
64.80%
88.00%
62.50%
66.60%
64.80%
59.10%
41.50%
58.60%
52.20%
62.10%
51.60%
50.00%
67.60%
52.90%
64.70%
55.20%
49.90%
34.10%
60.70%
70.70%
69.80%
44.40%
70.90%
67.80%
72.80%
62.50%
76.30%
38.70%
64.80%
68.00%
61.40%
66.70%
81.70%
58.30%
59.90%
52.00%
84.50%
48.10%
50.20%
51.70%
79.80%
65.70%
40.00%
54.40%
61.70%
66.00%
63.00%
59.80%
55.00%
47.80%
96.40%
108.50%
41.50%
58.40%
88.20%
Spring 2009 71.40% 74.00% 75.90% 67.50% 69.30% 81.30% 76.80% 67.30% 72.50% 62.90% 82.10% 48.60% 89.30% 73.30% 71.70% 78.90% 65.80% 64.00% 72.00% 69.30% 64.30% 79.20% 51.70% 68.50% 74.30% 57.10% 48.20% 58.10% 44.20% 61.10% 53.90% 65.00% 57.50% 64.70% 40.00% 57.10% 31.00% 74.50% 54.20% 72.60% Fall 2009 95.00% 64.10% 76.10% 76.00% 76.00% 77.10% 73.10% 65.50% 65.70% 54.90% 82.70% 60.70% 52.40% 87.00% 64.90% 70.00% 70.60% 55.40% 64.60% 64.90% 71.10% 73.20% 32.50% 54.80% 73.60% 72.50% 61.00% 65.70% 64.40% 95.00% 76.90% 46.40% 73.00% 45.50% 58.10% 52.00% 82.90% 37.60% 46.30% 68.30% 74.80% Spring 2010 76.80%
76.10%
74.50%
74.30%
74.00%
73.80%
72.80%
72.60%
72.60%
71.70%
71.30%
69.60%
69.40%
69.40%
68.90%
68.60%
67.60%
66.40%
65.60%
64.70%
64.40%
64.30%
63.60%
63.30%
62.50%
62.50%
62.10%
61.50%
61.50%
59.90%
59.20%
58.90%
58.80%
57.50%
56.80%
56.00%
55.20%
55.00%
54.90%
52.80%
51.60%
Page 26 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Percent Seats Filled Discipline CE AJ FT AQUA CR EDUC FOR FS GC LEGL NR RT TH Average Disciplines Fall 2006 8.20% 61.60% Spring 2007 7.10% 59.70% Fall 2007 9.70%
66.80%
9.60% 44.60% 47.30% 100.00% 73.10% 50.00%
29.20% 31.70% 60.00%
68.00% 63.70% 71.30%
64 61 60
Spring 2008 9.10%
59.50%
Fall 2008 12.30%
78.90%
Spring 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 8.90% 73.90% 13.30% 90.40% 100.00% 19.30%
17.20%
0.00%
70.60% 66 69.60%
66
100.00%
100.00%
65.80%
62
75.30%
64
68.20% 64 Discipline. Ranking the fill rates at census date from most efficient to least efficient (highest fill rate to
lowest fill rate) for the individual disciplines at the College of the Redwoods for Spring 2010, the most
efficient disciplines have been the most efficient over the last four years (see Chart 11). The top 10 most
efficient disciplines in terms of the highest percent of seats filled include Speech, Welding, Chemistry,
Biology, Native American Studies, Licensed Vocational Nursing, Environmental Science, Philosophy, Health
Education, and Health Occupation. The disciplines that have been the least efficient in the last four years that
have been consistently offered from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 include Diesel Heavy Equipment Technology,
Dance, Hospitality/ Restaurant/ Culinary Arts, Real Estate, French, Engineering, Drafting Technology,
Drama, Medical Assisting, and Information Technology. (For complete detail by discipline for each semester
on the fill rates at the College, please see Appendix B, Table A.)
Chart 12. Sample Of Discipline Efficiency Report For All College, Spring 2010
CLARUS Corporation Page 27 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 A sample of the first page of the discipline efficiency report for Spring 2010 is presented in Chart 12 (above).
This report details by discipline the number of courses and sections offered for the semester, the total student
hours and student credits, the number of instructors used, minimum, maximum and average course size, and
minimum, maximum and average seats filled. Using this report, the College will quickly see what discipline
areas need to improve their overall efficiency, what disciplines are at capacity and which need to add capacity.
(For complete discipline detail by division for Summer 2009, Fall 2009 and Spring 2010, please see
Appendix B, Tables B-1 through B-8.)
Chart 13. Sample Of Course Efficiency For Business Discipline, Spring 2010
Course. Detailed course efficiency rates within disciplines for Summer 2009, Fall 2009, and Spring 2010
are presented in Appendix B, Table C and the same information for the sites is presented in Appendix B,
Tables C1A-1 through C1A-11 (Spring 2010) and Appendix B, Tables C1B-1 through C1B-8 (Fall 2009). These
reports provide the College a summary of the efficiency and overall productivity of each course at the College
and by sites for the last year. The course report (example seen above in Chart 13) for the Business Discipline
details the course name, the discipline and course number, the times sections are offered, the number of
credits for the course, the number of sections offered for the semester, the minimum, maximum, and average
course size, the fill rate for the course and the number of unduplicated instructors used for the course. In the
example above, Business 10, Introduction to Business, offered eight sections for an average fill rate of 59
percent. Since this is less than the recommended 70 percent fill rate, the College should examine why so
many sections are being offered and determine if fewer sections should be offered – to still offer enough seats
to meet demand, increase efficiency, and minimize instructors. Using this report, the College will quickly see
what courses need to improve their overall efficiency, what courses are at capacity and which need to add
capacity. (For detailed course patterns for the last four years for each campus, see Appendix B, Tables C2-A
through C2-I and by discipline, see Appendix B, Tables C3-A to C3-H.)
CLARUS Corporation Page 28 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 14. Sample Of Efficiency By Section For Art 17, Fall 2009
Section. The final examination of efficiency is analysis of the number of sections offered by course for a
discipline. For example, in the Art 17 example in Chart 14, eight sections of Art 17 were active in Fall 2009,
with 168 students enrolled at the Eureka Campus. Since Art 17 allows a maximum of 30 students per section,
Art 17 only needs six sections of 30 students to accommodate enrollment and provide for some enrollment
growth. In other words, the College has been offering too many sections – even though the fill rate is at 80
percent. By examining the enrollments in addition to the fill rate for multiple sections offered, the College can
tighten up the schedule and increase efficiency. The Section Report provides the following information on a
by-section basis: course name, discipline, course number, credits for course, section number, time section is
offered, location (campus, building, room), room capacity, number of students enrolled, maximum students
allowed, the fill rate, and instructor name. Utilizing this information, the College can examine section level
information to better plan their schedule. (Provided in Appendix B, Table D is the section reports for all
College for Summer 2009, Fall 2009, and Spring 2010. The section reports for each site for the last four years
are presented in Appendix B, Tables D1-A through D1-I, and the section reports for the divisions for the last
four years are presented in Appendix B, Tables D2-A through D2-H.)
Recommendations For Efficiency After reviewing the efficiency rates and data contained in Appendix B, it is clear that there is room for
improvement in efficiency at the College of the Redwoods. Improvements in efficiencies should have a direct
impact on the financial wellness of the institution as well. First, the fill rates at the College of the Redwoods
for disciplines, courses, and sections are low. But there is another issue facing the College – the issue of many
single section courses being offered in addition to the issue of too many multiple section courses. The number
of courses with one section, 2 sections, 3 to 5 sections, and 6 or more sections offered in Fall 2009 at the
College of the Redwoods is presented in Chart 15 (following).
CLARUS Corporation Page 29 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 15. Sections Offered By Course For Fall 2009
250
227
200
Courses Offered With
1 Section
150
100
Courses Offered With
2 Sections
83
83
Courses Offered With
3 To 5 Sections
46
50
Courses Offered With
6 Or More Sections
0
Fall 2009
As seen in Chart 15, 227 of 439 courses have only one section offered in Fall 2009 – 52 percent of the courses
offered in Fall 2009 only offered one section. Nineteen percent of the courses had two sections offered (83
courses) and 19 percent of the courses (83) had three to five sections offered. Only 10 percent of the courses
(46 courses) had six or more sections offered in Fall 2009. Typically, a college can find efficiencies by
reducing the number of sections offered in multiple section courses. In other words, usually there are too
many sections offered to meet student enrollment for a course when offering multiple sections and, to
increase efficiency, a college simply has to offer fewer sections of that course.
However, at the College of the Redwoods, there are a majority of the courses that are only offering a single
section. This creates a very different issue for the College. The question for the College is how often to offer
the single section courses. For example, if there is not enough enrollment to fill a section each semester, then
the course with a single section should be offered every other semester – or once a year. This means that the
College must be extremely careful in their scheduling to ensure that the course is offered timely so that
students can complete it for their curriculum needs.
Recommendation: For the courses with one section, courses with a fill rate of less than 70
percent should be offered less often – not every semester. In other words, that course should be
offered once a year, but when the course will be offered (which semester) should be noted in the
curriculum to ensure that students will plan the course for the correct semester in their curriculum.
For the courses with multiple sections, the College should examine all courses with less than 80
percent fill rate to determine if there are too many sections being offered by course at comparable
times. In other words, calculate the number of students enrolled, divide by the class cap for the
course, and that yields the number of sections needed. Allow at least a 10 percent growth factor for
the sections offered. The College must consider the locations of the courses and the timeframes they
are offered when they are reducing sections offered for a course with multiple sections.
Disciplines at the College of the Redwoods should be at a minimum of 75 percent seats filled for efficiency.
Each discipline area should examine all their courses and for any courses under 70 percent, they should
determine how the course can be increased. By increasing efficiencies (a higher fill rate), the College will save
on adjunct faculty cost, full-time faculty can be reallocated to new program offerings, and a room at the
College can be opened, potentially at a key fill time, and can be utilized for a high-demand section.
CLARUS Corporation Page 30 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Recommendation: Review the discipline areas with excess capacity – those with fill rates less
than 70 percent; the College should attempt to have at least a morning and evening section for
courses if the demand is present. But having two sections at the same time on different days with
each section filling at less than 50 percent should be closely examined, and only one should be
offered in that timeframe.
When examining the detailed section reports in the efficiency analysis, the number of online sections offered
each semester was also examined. In Fall 2009, only seven percent of the sections offered by the College of
the Redwoods were offered online and, in Spring 2010, only 6.5 percent of the sections offered were online.
At many community colleges, the rule of thumb for online offerings is at least 15 percent of the total sections
offered at the College. It was anticipated that at least 10 to 15 percent of the sections offered at the College of
the Redwoods would be online, especially given their large geographic service area. At many community
colleges, the online sections fill the fastest and fill first, and they assist in alleviating the room issues at a
college. In addition, when students are geographically isolated in a service area, online becomes a key way for
the students to access courses and programs.
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods needs to develop more online sections of the
most popular courses. Students today expect to be able to fill in load with online when they cannot
work classes into their schedule. Extend this examination to developing a completely online
associate degree for transfer.
CLARUS Corporation Page 31 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Facility Utilization After evaluating the cancellation and the efficiency of sections at the College, room utilization has to be
examined. In other words, how well is the College of the Redwoods using the rooms available for sections
offered? In discussions with College personnel about scheduling issues, comments were made that during key
morning times at the College, there are limited rooms available for scheduling. The question is whether this is
fact or myth. To understand how well the College is using the available rooms, an analysis of room usage was
conducted which focused on physical facility utilization.
To examine the physical facility utilization, the data on room size has to be available and correct. One
parameter that was specified for download for the section data for Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 was room
maximum capacity – or the number of seats physically available in the rooms in which sections were
scheduled. Unfortunately, after many discussions with administrative personnel at the College of the
Redwoods, the room data in the College’s administrative computing system is at best suspect, and at worst
completely wrong or missing. The physical room capacity was simply missing from many sections in the
download. Since physical facility utilization cannot be calculated without the physical room capacities, the
College worked with the administrative services to obtain the physical room inventory that is sent to the state
as well as the room capacities determined by the State Fire Marshall. In addition, during interviews at the
College, the administrative assistants noted they had room charts for some rooms which noted physical
capacity and those were shared with CLARUS Corporation.
However, the major problem for the College is that none of the room capacities matched – the physical room
capacities that are reported to the state did not match the fire capacities and did not match the capacities
provided by the administrative assistants. The College must conduct a physical room inventory and
document seats and room features immediately.
Recommendation: Assign personnel at the College to conduct a physical room inventory for
every room in every building at the College. The inventory should outline the number of physical
seats in the room that can be used for students or stations if a lab, the type of seats, and the room
features – such as projector, whiteboard, screen, etc. This inventory should then be used to update
the physical room inventories turned into the California Community College system. In addition,
the maximum number of students per room as per the state fire regulations must also be reconciled.
The final room inventory should then be posted on the College’s shared internal drive for access by
all departments and academic coordinators. This should be done immediately. Finally, the correct
room capacities should then be entered for every section scheduled for Spring 2010 in the College’s
administrative computing system.
To assess physical utilization, the analysis typically evaluates the percentage of the physical seats filled per
day (enrollees divided by physical seats available for the hour), the percent of rooms used per hour per day
and the room usage for the rooms at the College. The issue that is addressed in the physical utilization
component of the study is whether the College is completely full with no excess capacity.
Physical Seat Utilization. The first component of the physical utilization is the assessment of the physical
seats filled per hour. In other words, how many of the available physical seats at the College are filled with
students each hour for all classrooms. This analysis cannot be conducted until the College corrects the room
capacities. After the room capacities are corrected and entered into the administrative computing system, an
analysis of the usage of the rooms by section can be conducted utilizing the ClassTracks software program.
Chart 16 presents the type of analysis that should be conducted for the physical seats filled per day.
CLARUS Corporation Page 32 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 16. Percent Physical Seats Filled Per Day For Active Sections For College Of The Redwoods, Spring 2010
Monday Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Spring 2008 Summer 2008 Fall 2008 Winter 2009 Spring 2009 Summer 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Tuesday Percent Physical Seats Filled By Day Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday The percent of the physical seats filled (enrollments divided by seats available) at the College of the Redwoods
for active classes from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010 should be calculated and added to Chart 16. This information
will provide the College an analysis of the physical seat utilization.
Chart 17. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Eureka Campus (89 Rooms), Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 06:00‐07:00 0 0.0% 2 2.2% 3 3.4%
2 2.2%
2 2.2%
1 1.1% 0 0.0%
07:00‐08:00 0 0.0% 3 3.4% 4 4.5%
2 2.2%
3 3.4%
1 1.1% 0 0.0%
08:00‐09:00 1 1.1% 41 46.1% 38 42.7%
41 46.1%
36 40.4%
21 23.6% 5 5.6%
09:00‐10:00 2 2.2% 47 52.8% 45 50.6%
47 52.8%
44 49.4%
32 36.0% 11 12.4%
10:00‐11:00 2 2.2% 57 64.0% 59 66.3%
57 64.0%
58 65.2%
38 42.7% 14 15.7%
11:00‐12:00 3 3.4% 61 68.5% 67 75.3%
61 68.5%
66 74.2%
36 40.4% 15 16.9%
12:00‐13:00 2 2.2% 54 60.7% 58 65.2%
54 60.7%
56 62.9%
24 27.0% 16 18.0%
13:00‐14:00 3 3.4% 54 60.7% 49 55.1%
56 62.9%
49 55.1%
27 30.3% 14 15.7%
14:00‐15:00 3 3.4% 58 65.2% 55 61.8%
63 70.8%
57 64.0%
27 30.3% 14 15.7%
15:00‐16:00 2 2.2% 46 51.7% 47 52.8%
50 56.2%
50 56.2%
23 25.8% 13 14.6%
16:00‐17:00 2 2.2% 33 37.1% 34 38.2%
33 37.1%
36 40.4%
10 11.2% 8 9.0%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 31 34.8% 24 27.0%
29 32.6%
25 28.1%
3 3.4% 1 1.1%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 44 49.4% 48 53.9%
46 51.7%
46 51.7%
7 7.9% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 44 49.4% 49 55.1%
47 52.8%
47 52.8%
7 7.9% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 28 31.5% 33 37.1%
33 37.1%
31 34.8%
5 5.6% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 11 12.4% 15 16.9%
16 18.0%
15 16.9%
5 5.6% 1 1.1%
CLARUS Corporation Page 33 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Time 22:00‐23:00 0 0.0% 1 1.1% 3 3.4%
1 1.1%
2 2.2%
1 1.1% 1 1.1%
23:00‐24:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 1 1.1%
0 0.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Classroom Utilization. The personnel at the College of the Redwoods indicated that there are simply no
rooms available in the mornings – the 9:00am to 1:00pm time frame. But the information presented in Chart
17 proves this is a myth for the Eureka Campus. Chart 17 presents the total number of rooms used in Fall
2009 (89 rooms), the number of rooms in use each hour of each day of the week, and the percentage of the
rooms in use each hour of the day and each day of the week for the Eureka Campus. In Fall 2009, the Eureka
Campus utilized 89 total rooms. As seen in Chart 17, on the Eureka Campus from 9:00am to 1:00pm, less
than 70 percent of the rooms used are in use. For colleges that are maxed out, the rooms in use in this time
frame run more than 90 percent. Two issues can be impacting the room usage. If the College has multiple
specialty use rooms, this can be lowering the room utilization number – in other words, many sections
cannot be scheduled in specialty room usage. The other issue is that since no one is responsible for
scheduling all the rooms and making sure that the rooms are being utilized to the maximum, rooms may be
missed for scheduling that could be used. Overall, the Eureka Campus is not completely maxed on room
usage. There is also room for increased utilization in the evening for additional classes as well as on the
weekend – Saturday and Sunday. (Detailed analyses of classroom usage by day and hour for each site for Fall
2009 and Spring 2010 are presented in Appendix C, Tables A1-A through A1-G and Appendix C, Tables A2-A
through A2-H.)
Chart 18. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Arcata Site (5 Rooms), Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 08:00‐09:00 0 0.00% 1 20.00% 3 60.00%
2 40.00%
3 60.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
09:00‐10:00 0 0.00% 1 20.00% 3 60.00%
2 40.00%
3 60.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
10:00‐11:00 0 0.00% 2 40.00% 2 40.00%
3 60.00%
3 60.00%
1 20.00% 1 20.00%
11:00‐12:00 0 0.00% 2 40.00% 2 40.00%
3 60.00%
3 60.00%
1 20.00% 1 20.00%
12:00‐13:00 0 0.00% 1 20.00% 2 40.00%
2 40.00%
3 60.00%
0 0.00% 1 20.00%
13:00‐14:00 0 0.00% 2 40.00% 4 80.00%
3 60.00%
3 60.00%
1 20.00% 1 20.00%
14:00‐15:00 0 0.00% 3 60.00% 4 80.00%
4 80.00%
4 80.00%
1 20.00% 0 0.00%
15:00‐16:00 0 0.00% 3 60.00% 4 80.00%
4 80.00%
4 80.00%
1 20.00% 0 0.00%
16:00‐17:00 0 0.00% 2 40.00% 2 40.00%
3 60.00%
3 60.00%
1 20.00% 0 0.00%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.00% 2 40.00% 1 20.00%
2 40.00%
0 0.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.00% 4 80.00% 3 60.00%
3 60.00%
2 40.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.00% 4 80.00% 3 60.00%
3 60.00%
2 40.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.00% 3 60.00% 3 60.00%
2 40.00%
2 40.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.00% 1 20.00% 1 20.00%
0 0.00%
0 0.00%
0 0.00% 0 0.00%
The classroom utilization for the Arcata site for the College of the Redwoods is presented in Chart 18. As seen
above, the Arcata site utilized five rooms in Fall 2009. The Arcata site has the highest utilization of their
rooms in the afternoon, unlike the Eureka Campus. Almost 80 percent of the rooms at the Arcata site are in
CLARUS Corporation Page 34 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 use Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 2:00pm to 5:00pm. The Arcata site still has capacity in the
mornings and on Saturday and Sunday. Three of five rooms are generally in use in the evenings at the Arcata
site.
Chart 19. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Del Norte Center (13 Rooms), Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 06:00‐07:00 0 0.0% 1 7.7% 0 0.0%
2 15.4%
0 0.0%
1 7.7% 0 0.0%
07:00‐08:00 0 0.0% 1 7.7% 0 0.0%
2 15.4%
0 0.0%
1 7.7% 0 0.0%
08:00‐09:00 0 0.0% 8 61.5% 6 46.2%
8 61.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8% 0 0.0%
09:00‐10:00 1 7.7% 9 69.2% 6 46.2%
9 69.2%
5 38.5%
5 38.5% 1 7.7%
10:00‐11:00 1 7.7% 9 69.2% 7 53.8%
8 61.5%
6 46.2%
4 30.8% 1 7.7%
11:00‐12:00 1 7.7% 7 53.8% 6 46.2%
5 38.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8% 1 7.7%
12:00‐13:00 1 7.7% 4 30.8% 3 23.1%
3 23.1%
3 23.1%
5 38.5% 1 7.7%
13:00‐14:00 1 7.7% 8 61.5% 9 69.2%
9 69.2%
9 69.2%
4 30.8% 1 7.7%
14:00‐15:00 1 7.7% 8 61.5% 10 76.9%
8 61.5%
10 76.9%
3 23.1% 1 7.7%
15:00‐16:00 1 7.7% 9 69.2% 7 53.8%
10 76.9%
7 53.8%
3 23.1% 1 7.7%
16:00‐17:00 1 7.7% 6 46.2% 5 38.5%
8 61.5%
5 38.5%
3 23.1% 1 7.7%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 8 61.5% 8 61.5%
7 53.8%
6 46.2%
1 7.7% 0 0.0%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 9 69.2% 9 69.2%
8 61.5%
7 53.8%
1 7.7% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 9 69.2% 7 53.8%
6 46.2%
7 53.8%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 7 53.8% 6 46.2%
4 30.8%
6 46.2%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 2 15.4% 2 15.4%
1 7.7%
1 7.7%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
The classroom utilization for the Del Norte Center for the College of the Redwoods is presented in Chart 19.
In Fall 2009, the Del Norte Center utilized 13 classrooms. The Del Norte Center has the highest classroom
utilization Mondays and Wednesday with more than 60 percent of the classrooms in use the majority of the
day. The utilization drops to half of the rooms being used on Tuesday and Thursday. As seen with the other
sites for the College of the Redwoods, there is excess capacity on Saturday and Sunday. Fifty to sixty percent
of the classrooms available are being used in the evenings.
Chart 20. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Eureka Downtown Site (6 Rooms),
Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 08:00‐09:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 2 33.3%
0 0.0%
2 33.3%
0 0.0% 4 66.7%
09:00‐10:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 2 33.3%
0 0.0%
2 33.3%
2 33.3% 5 83.3%
10:00‐11:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 1 16.7%
1 16.7%
1 16.7%
2 33.3% 5 83.3%
11:00‐12:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 2 33.3%
1 16.7%
2 33.3%
2 33.3% 5 83.3%
12:00‐13:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 2 33.3%
1 16.7%
2 33.3%
2 33.3% 5 83.3%
CLARUS Corporation Page 35 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Time 13:00‐14:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 4 66.7%
2 33.3%
4 66.7%
3 50.0% 4 66.7%
14:00‐15:00 0 0.0% 3 50.0% 4 66.7%
3 50.0%
4 66.7%
4 66.7% 4 66.7%
15:00‐16:00 0 0.0% 2 33.3% 3 50.0%
2 33.3%
3 50.0%
2 33.3% 4 66.7%
16:00‐17:00 0 0.0% 2 33.3% 3 50.0%
2 33.3%
3 50.0%
2 33.3% 2 33.3%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 4 66.7%
1 16.7%
4 66.7%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 5 83.3% 4 66.7%
5 83.3%
4 66.7%
3 50.0% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 5 83.3% 4 66.7%
5 83.3%
4 66.7%
3 50.0% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 4 66.7% 2 33.3%
4 66.7%
2 33.3%
3 50.0% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 1 16.7%
1 16.7%
1 16.7%
3 50.0% 0 0.0%
The Eureka Downtown site only had six classrooms in use in Fall 2009 (see Chart 20). Tuesday and Thursday
afternoon and evenings had the highest classroom utilization at the Eureka Downtown site – two-thirds of
the classrooms were in use during this time frame. There is excess capacity on Monday and Wednesday –
only one-third of the classrooms available are in use all day. However, in the evening, the Eureka Downtown
center is vibrant – more than two-thirds of the classrooms are in use. Classroom utilization on Saturday has
also been high for the Eureka Downtown site – more than two-thirds of the rooms available in Saturday are
in use. Sunday is the most underutilized day for classrooms at the Eureka Downtown site.
Chart 21. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Klamath-Trinity Site (6 Rooms),
Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 08:00‐09:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 0 0.0%
1 16.7%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
09:00‐10:00 0 0.0% 3 50.0% 3 50.0%
3 50.0%
3 50.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
10:00‐11:00 0 0.0% 3 50.0% 3 50.0%
3 50.0%
3 50.0%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
11:00‐12:00 0 0.0% 2 33.3% 3 50.0%
2 33.3%
3 50.0%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
12:00‐13:00 0 0.0% 2 33.3% 2 33.3%
2 33.3%
2 33.3%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
13:00‐14:00 0 0.0% 3 50.0% 3 50.0%
3 50.0%
3 50.0%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
14:00‐15:00 0 0.0% 4 66.7% 3 50.0%
3 50.0%
3 50.0%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
15:00‐16:00 0 0.0% 3 50.0% 2 33.3%
3 50.0%
2 33.3%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
16:00‐17:00 0 0.0% 5 83.3% 4 66.7%
4 66.7%
4 66.7%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 6 100.0% 4 66.7%
5 83.3%
4 66.7%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 6 100.0% 3 50.0%
6 100.0%
4 66.7%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 6 100.0% 1 16.7%
6 100.0%
2 33.3%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 2 33.3% 1 16.7%
4 66.7%
2 33.3%
1 16.7% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 1 16.7% 1 16.7%
2 33.3%
2 33.3%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
22:00‐23:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
1 16.7%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
CLARUS Corporation Page 36 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 The classroom utilization for the Klamath-Trinity site is presented in Chart 21. The Klamath-Trinity site only
had six rooms in use in Fall 2009. Monday and Wednesday evening has the highest utilization – all of the
rooms are in use. Monday to Thursday in the late afternoon is also a high use time for the Klamath-Trinity
site – more than two-thirds of the rooms are in use at 4pm. The Klamath-Trinity site has excess capacity in
the morning since only half of the rooms are in use and there is also excess capacity on Saturday and Sunday.
Chart 22. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For McKinleyville Site (5 Rooms),
Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 08:00‐09:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 0 0.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0%
1 20.0% 0 0.0%
09:00‐10:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 0 0.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0%
2 40.0% 0 0.0%
10:00‐11:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0%
1 20.0% 0 0.0%
11:00‐12:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 0 0.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0%
2 40.0% 0 0.0%
12:00‐13:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 0 0.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0%
2 40.0% 0 0.0%
13:00‐14:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
14:00‐15:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 1 20.0%
0 0.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
15:00‐16:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 1 20.0%
1 20.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
16:00‐17:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 1 20.0%
1 20.0%
1 20.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 2 40.0% 0 0.0%
2 40.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 3 60.0% 5 100.0%
3 60.0%
3 60.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 2 40.0% 5 100.0%
2 40.0%
3 60.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 1 20.0% 4 80.0%
1 20.0%
2 40.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 2 40.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Classes at the McKinleyville site started in Fall 2009 and as seen in Chart 22 above, the site has very low
room utilization. Only one or two rooms at the site were in use the first semester in Fall 2009, primarily
during the day. The highest utilization of rooms at the McKinleyville site was seen in the evenings from
Monday to Thursday. This pattern is very common for an off-site location with respect to utilization. When a
new off-site is opened, it typically fills evening classes first and then has to work to schedule day classes that
will fill. The McKinleyville site must be watched to increase classroom utilization over the next couple of
years.
CLARUS Corporation Page 37 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 23. Percent Rooms Used Per Day Per Hour Of All Rooms For Medocino Coast Site (13 Rooms),
Fall 2009
Time Rooms used per day per hour. Percent utilization is based on the number of classroom hours used each day. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util Rooms % Util 08:00‐09:00 0 0.0% 1 7.7% 0 0.0%
1 7.7%
0 0.0%
1 7.7% 0 0.0%
09:00‐10:00 0 0.0% 5 38.5% 5 38.5%
5 38.5%
3 23.1%
8 61.5% 3 23.1%
10:00‐11:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 7 53.8%
5 38.5%
5 38.5%
8 61.5% 3 23.1%
11:00‐12:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 7 53.8%
5 38.5%
5 38.5%
8 61.5% 3 23.1%
12:00‐13:00 0 0.0% 3 23.1% 6 46.2%
3 23.1%
4 30.8%
8 61.5% 3 23.1%
13:00‐14:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 5 38.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8%
4 30.8% 3 23.1%
14:00‐15:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 5 38.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8%
4 30.8% 3 23.1%
15:00‐16:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 6 46.2%
5 38.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8% 3 23.1%
16:00‐17:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 5 38.5%
5 38.5%
4 30.8%
4 30.8% 2 15.4%
17:00‐18:00 0 0.0% 3 23.1% 3 23.1%
3 23.1%
2 15.4%
1 7.7% 1 7.7%
18:00‐19:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 8 61.5%
7 53.8%
7 53.8%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
19:00‐20:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 8 61.5%
7 53.8%
7 53.8%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
20:00‐21:00 0 0.0% 6 46.2% 7 53.8%
7 53.8%
6 46.2%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
21:00‐22:00 0 0.0% 3 23.1% 6 46.2%
4 30.8%
5 38.5%
0 0.0% 0 0.0%
The Mendocino Coast Education Center is also an established location for the College of the Redwoods. As
seen in Chart 23, 13 rooms were available for use at the Mendocino Coast Education Center in Fall 2009. As
an established location offering degrees, the classroom utilization is lower than would be expected. Less than
half of the classrooms available are in use in Fall 2009. The classroom utilization varies very little based on
the time of day – slightly more than 45 percent of the classrooms are in use on Monday and slightly more
than one-third are in use on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The highest classroom utilization is seen on
Friday mornings with 62 percent of the classrooms available in use.
Chart 24. Twenty Most Used Rooms For College, Spring 2010
Room Number AJ101
AT109
AJ101A
FM108
CA138
FM112
LS102
DTN111
AT105
AD107
DN2
PE201
CLARUS Corporation Campus EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EDTN EKA EKA DN EKA Building Capacity Sessions Sections AJ
AT
AJ
FM
CA
FM
LS
DTN
AT
AD
DN
PE
60
44
42
26
30
0
104
60
31
51
35
54
15
42
14
30
22
22
42
11
21
27
17
19
3
21
9
17
11
10
21
5
15
13
7
9
Hours 172.50 142.25 126.00 81.25 60.50 57.00 57.00 56.50 55.00 51.50 49.00 48.00 Page 38 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Room Number Campus LS113
FM100
FM204
CA105
CA113
FM205
FM206
AT128
Building Capacity Sessions Sections LS
FM
FM
CA
CA
FM
FM
AT
24
122
56
40
105
60
50
26
17
28
27
20
28
27
27
10
13
15
15
10
15
14
14
5
EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA EKA April 2010 Hours 46.25 46.00 45.75 45.00 45.00 43.75 43.75 42.50 Room Usage. Utilization of a campus not only includes how many rooms are used at the campus but how
many hours the room is used during the week. Chart 24 presents the 20 most used rooms for the College of
the Redwoods for Spring 2010. The chart presents the room number, location, the “guesstimated” room
capacity, the number of sessions meeting in the room each week, the number of sections using the room each
week, and the number of hours the room is in use for the week. The majority of the most utilized classrooms
are located on the Eureka Campus – 18 of the top 20 rooms. Three rooms are used more than 100 hours per
week – AJ101, AT109, and AJ101A – and all three are on the Eureka Campus. Seven of the rooms are used
more than 40 hours per week. Two of the top 20 rooms with the heaviest utilization are not on the Eureka
Campus – DTN111 at the Eureka Downtown site and DN2 at the Del Norte Center. (For detailed analysis of
room utilization for Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 for each site, please see Appendix C, Tables B1-A through
B1-G and Appendix C, Tables B2-A through B2-H.)
Chart 25. Twenty Least Used Rooms For College, Spring 2010
Room Number PS106
HHSCLASSRM
MG300
MM132
DTN105
MCKL104AB
MCKL103
AT126E
GH100
MCKL104A
PE200
SFHD1
FM210
RSC17
SFHB2
MCKL104B
PEFB
PS110
AT133F
MM104
CLARUS Corporation Campus Building Capacity Sessions Sections Hours EKA
PS
24
4
2 12.00 KT
MC
MC
EDTN
MCKL
MCKL
EKA
EKA
MCKL
EKA
SH
EKA
SH
SH
MCKL
EKA
EKA
EKA
MC
HHS
MG
MM
DTN
MCKL
MCKL
AT
GH
MCKL
PE
SFH
FM
RSC
SFH
MCKL
PE
PS
AT
MM
0
0
20
24
32
41
0
20
32
25
0
25
0
0
32
0
40
20
30
6
4
8
4
3
4
8
2
3
4
1
2
1
2
1
4
2
1
6
3 4 3 2 2 2 4 2 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 5 12.00 12.00 12.00 11.00 11.00 10.50 9.00 8.00 6.25 6.00 4.75 4.00 4.00 4.00 3.25 3.00 3.00 2.50 1.50 Page 39 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 The 20 least used rooms at the College of the Redwoods in Spring 2010 are presented in Chart 25. The
majority of the least utilized rooms are on the off-site locations for the College of the Redwoods. Eight of the
least utilized rooms – those being used less than 12 hours per week – are on the Eureka Campus. Those
rooms are PS106, AT126E, GH100, PE200, FM210, PEFB, PS110, and AT133F. The other rooms in the 20
least used rooms are located at the Klamath-Trinity site (one room), the Mendocino Coast Education Center
(three rooms), Eureka Downtown site (one room), McKinleyville site (four rooms), and the new SH site
(three rooms).
Chart 26. Example Of Room Capacity Versus Maximum Student Enrollment For Business Discipline,
Spring 2010
Room Utilization. The final issue that must be addressed in physical facility utilization is whether the right
room is being used for the size of the class being taught. The room capacities must first be corrected before
this analysis can be conducted. Using Chart 26 as an example, the College should compare the maximum
number of students allowed to enroll in a section to the maximum room capacity for each section. For
example, examining the Principle of Accounting section being held on the Eureka Campus at 8:30am to
11:25am Monday and Wednesday, the maximum room capacity (if correct ) is 60 students. The maximum
enrollment capacity for this section is 35 students. The question is whether this section of accounting should
be scheduled in a room with a physical capacity of 60 when the section is capped at 35 students. In this
example, 25 seats are being removed per hour the classroom is in use and potentially during high fill rates –
during the morning. If this occurs in 10 sections, more than 250 potential seats are being removed from use
per hour of class. Another section with a higher class capacity may be better suited in this room.
The rule of thumb to follow when examining the room assignments is if the physical room capacity is 10 or
more seats higher than the student enrollment maximum, then the question should be asked if the section is
being scheduled in the correct room.
Recommendations For Facility Utilization Personnel at the College indicated that rooms were “owned” by academic areas and other areas had “dibs” on
rooms. Currently, no one at the College apparently walks through the rooms and conducts an inventory and
checks the maximum room capacities. No one person at the College currently has the responsibility to assign
rooms and to make room changes. Room changes have to be negotiated at this time if it is not “owned” by the
personnel scheduling the room.
CLARUS Corporation Page 40 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Recommendation: Designate a campus scheduler to assign rooms for sections scheduled. The
campus scheduler should have the final authority for the room assignments for the class schedule.
Academic areas would have room “seniority” in scheduling but would no longer “own” rooms. The
room scheduler would review all the room assignments and locations to determine that the most
efficient use of rooms is being done each semester prior to release of the class schedule. The campus
scheduler would also review the space utilization data as well as conduct the physical room
inventory. Ultimately, the campus scheduler would be responsible for conducting on-going
utilization studies as included in this report and present those results to the administrative team at
the College each semester.
The College of the Redwoods has sections that vary in meeting length – for example, three credit classes meet
a different length of time than four credit classes – and this has a major impact on room usage. The classes of
varying credit hours can impact a schedule in a room – it may cause a room to be empty for half an hour or
more between classes of varying meeting times. Over a semester, this impacts the physical utilization of the
College.
Recommendation: To minimize the time a room is empty, the new campus scheduler should
designate specific rooms for credit hour classes that require longer meeting times. For example,
assign four credit lecture classes to the same room so that no gaps in the schedule in the rooms exist.
By assigning the same credit hour classes to the same rooms, the time a room is empty will be
minimized.
Until the correct room capacities are established, the true physical utilization of the College of the Redwoods
cannot be established. From the cursory look at the room capacity data and the utilization of rooms, it
appears that the College is being under-utilized. Space utilization should improve as the College improves the
efficiencies of the sections being offered. But it appears that many of the rooms at the College of the
Redwoods are not being used as many hours per week as the Campus believes. A contributing factor to the
potential under utilization of the Campus may be the class schedule which is focused on Monday/
Wednesday and Tuesday/ Thursday classes with a few Friday and Saturday classes.
Recommendation: Nationally with increased enrollments, community colleges have had to
make better use of their physical facility. The move has been back to a five-day a week schedule
with classes meeting three days a week (Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday), as well as two days a week
(Monday/ Wednesday and Tuesday/ Thursday). Examine the feasibility of moving to a five day a
week schedule. In the interim, explore options for the College for increasing the low classroom
utilization on Friday.
In addition, examine the 20 to 40 most under-utilized rooms based on the number of hours used per
week. Explore what can be done to increase the usage of these rooms per week.
The final step in the utilization analysis is to determine if the enrollment maximums for the classes are
realistic for the discipline as well as not blocking the seats in a large room.
Recommendation: Review the maximum class enrollment caps against the maximum physical
seat capacity across the disciplines by room to see if rooms are under-utilized and if classes need to
be moved to other classrooms. In addition, review the maximum enrollment caps across the
disciplines to determine if the class caps are realistic and should be increased in some disciplines.
CLARUS Corporation Page 41 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Curriculum Analysis Student profiles from other community colleges indicate that there are distinct attendance patterns by
different market segments. Younger, full-time students tend to prefer a 9:00am to noon class schedule two or
three days a week. Older working adults usually prefer evening and/ or weekend classes. Online learners may
want complete degrees online. The question for the College of the Redwoods is whether the scheduling
patterns within a semester by program area are meeting the needs of the current students, as well as
prospective students, especially those defined by the market assessments of high school, working adults and
business and industry. For example, if a student is majoring in business and requirements are an Accounting
course, a Business course and an English course, and the student can only attend in the evening, are all three
courses offered on the same night, or are they offered on three nights – allowing the student to take all three
if it works with his or her availability? In addition, can students really complete degree programs in a
reasonable time frame – in two or three years? The Curriculum Analysis component examined these
questions. (For detailed analysis of course scheduling patterns by site, see Appendix D, Table 1 and Tables 1-A
through 1-H.)
The process for examining the curriculum at the College of the Redwoods required that the curriculum for
each of the programs offered to students in the catalog be input into the ClassTracks software analysis
program. The curriculum from each program area in the 2009-2010 catalog for the College of the Redwoods
was input into the analysis program.
Chart 27. Example Of Courses Required For Business Certificate Of Recognition Desktop Publishing,
2009 To 2010 Catalog
An example of the input of the curriculum into ClassTracks is shown in Chart 27. This is an example of the
Business Certificate of Recognition Desktop Publishing. Although the system is set up for a semester input,
this was not considered since the curriculum was not established by semester order. When this curriculum is
pulled for analysis using the selection criteria in the ClassTracks program, these courses will be pulled for
examination in the curriculum analysis. Every curriculum from the current catalog was input for analysis, as
well as the transfer components for the CSU and UC systems.
CLARUS Corporation Page 42 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 28. Availability Of Curriculum Completion At College Of The Redwoods, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
100
80
72
60
40
28
20
16
12
13
8
0
EKA
Total Academic Awards
DN
MC
Programs With Courses Missing Last Four Years
Curriculum Completion. A major question for the College of the Redwoods is whether a student can
actually complete the curriculum as set forth in the catalog, especially those degrees noted by location on
pages 40 and 41 of the 2009-2010 catalog, in a reasonable time – in other words, have the courses been
offered in each area that is required for degree completion over a reasonable time frame. The curriculum was
analyzed for the College of the Redwoods for the last four years – Fall 2006 to Spring 2010. Chart 28 presents
the summary of the analysis results. At the Eureka Campus (EKA), the College offers 78 total academic
awards to students and 28 of the academic awards could not be completed in the last four years because
required courses are missing. The College of the Redwoods offers 12 academic awards at the Del Norte Center
and only four of those academic awards could be completed in the last four year (Fall 2006 to Spring 2010) –
two-thirds of the academic awards offered at the Del Norte Center could not be completed in the last four
years. At the Mendocino Coast Education Center, 13 of 16 academic awards could not be completed in the last
four years. For the academic awards at the Eureka Campus, 39 percent of the academic awards could not be
completed over the last four years because of missing courses. (For detailed curriculum scheduling by
campus, please see Appendix D, Tables 2-A through 2-H.)
CLARUS Corporation Page 43 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 An example of the inability to complete is seen in Chart 29 for the Eureka Campus for the Business Certificate
of Recognition Desktop Publishing
Chart 29. Curriculum Availability For Business Certificate Of Recognition, Desktop Publishing,
Eureka Campus, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
As seen in Chart 29, the following courses are required for completion of the Business Certificate of
Recognition Desktop Publishing: BT16, BT17, BT63, BT112, BT162, BUS152, ENGL150, and DM70A. The
courses that have been offered and the time of day offered are presented in Chart 29 (see bottom left side of
chart). From Fall 2006 to Spring 2010, the following required courses have been offered: BT112, BT16, BT17,
DM70A, and ENGL150. Over the last four years, BT63, BT162, and BUS152 have not been offered – or they
have been offered and were cancelled. In the last four years, students who were interested in completing a
Business Certificate of Recognition Desktop Publishing could not have done so at the Eureka Campus of the
College of the Redwoods.
In addition, the courses that were offered are color coded by time in the curriculum analysis for each
semester. If at least one section of a course was offered in the morning (8am to Noon) then a red box appears;
if one is offered in the afternoon (Noon to 5pm) then a blue box appears; a section offered in the evening
(after 5pm) is coded with a yellow box; and, a section on the weekend (Saturday or Sunday) is represented by
a purple box. Examining Chart 29, if BT112 had been offered in the evening, then a student could have
completed the courses offered all in the evening, but it would have been difficult for a student to complete the
Certificate of Recognition Desktop Publishing in the morning and not at all on the weekend. This also
assumes that the required courses that have not been offered would have been offered in these time frames.
Chart 30. Analysis Of Curriculum Offerings For The College Of The Redwoods, 2009 To 2010 Catalog1
Program Title/ Academic Award Del Norte Education Center Courses Missing Eureka Courses Missing Mendocino Coast Education Center Courses Missing [ADCT] Addiction Studies Certificate of Achievement [AJ] Administration of Justice Associate of Science No courses missing No courses missing [AJ] Administration of Justice Certificate of Achievement [AJ] Basic Law Enforcement Academy Certificate of Achievement No courses missing No courses missing CLARUS Corporation Page 44 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Eureka Courses Missing Program Title/ Academic Award April 2010 Del Norte Education Center Courses Missing Mendocino Coast Education Center Courses Missing [AG] Agriculture, General Associate of Science [AG] Plant Science Associate of Science [AG] Plant Science Certificate of Achievement [AG] Landscape Maintenance Certificate of Recognition [AG] Nursery Practices Certificate of Recognition [AT] Automotive Technology Associate of Science [AT] Basic Automotive Technology Certificate of Recognition [AT] Advanced Automotive Technology Certificate of Achievement No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing AG 35 No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing [BUS] Business, General Associate of Science [BUS] Business, General Certificate of Achievement [BUS] Medical Office Business Skills Certificate of Achievement [BUS] Bookkeeping Certificate of Recognition [BUS] Desktop Publishing Certificate of Recognition BT 63 BT 63 BUS 152 No courses missing BT 63, BT 162, BUS 152 BT 63, BT 162, BUS 152, DM 70A BT 63, BUS 152, DM 70A [BUS] Payroll Clerk Certificate of Recognition [BUS] Word Processing Certificate of Recognition [BT] Computer Support Specialist Associate of Science No courses missing BT 111 BT 162, BT 152 BT 162, BT 152 No courses missing BT 3, BT 50, BUS 52, CIS 30, CIS 70 [BT] Office Professional Associate of Science BT 63, CIS 86, DM 77 BT 3, BT 63, BT 50, BUS 4, BUS 180, CIS 86, BUS 52, CIS 30, CIS 16, DM 70A, DM 71 BT 3, BT 51, BT 63, BUS 52, BT 50, BUS 4, CIS 16, CIS 30, CIS 98, DM 70A, DM 71, DM 76, DM 77 [CIS] CIS Networking Associate of Science [CIS] CIS Networking Certificate of Achievement [CT] Construction Technology Associate of Science [CT] Residential Construction I Certificate of Achievement [CT] Residential Construction II Certificate of Achievement [CT] Residential Wiring Certificate of Recognition [CT] Cabinetmaking & Millwork Certificate of Achievement [CT] Historic Preservation & Restoration Associate of Science [CT] Historic Preservation & Restoration Certificate of Recognition No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing CT 10, CT 13 CT 10, CT 13 [CT] Fine Woodworking I Certificate of Achievement [CT] Fine Woodworking II Certificate of Achievement [DA] Dental Assisting Associate of Science [DA] Dental Assisting Certificate of Achievement [DHET] Diesel Heavy Equipment Technology Associate of Science No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing [DHET] Diesel Heavy Equipment Technology Certificate of Achievement No courses missing [DHET] Diesel Engine Overhaul Certificate of Recognition [DHET] Diesel Truck Maintenance Certificate of No courses missing No courses missing CLARUS Corporation Page 45 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Program Title/ Academic Award Recognition [DHET] Diesel Fuel Injection Certificate of Recognition [DM] Digital Media Associate of Science [DM] Digital Media Certificate of Achievement [DT] Architectural Drafting Associate of Science [DT] Architectural Drafting Certificate of Achievement [DT] Civil Design Associate of Science [DT] Civil Design Certificate of Achievement [DT] Mechanical Drafting Associate of Science [DT] Mechanical Drafting Certificate of Achievement [ECE] Early Childhood Education Associate of Science Eureka Courses Missing April 2010 Del Norte Education Center Courses Missing Mendocino Coast Education Center Courses Missing No courses missing BT 63, DM 72, DM 77 BT 63, DM 72, DM 77 No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing DT 63 No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing [ECE] Early Childhood Education Certificate of Achievement No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing [FOR] Forestry & Natural Resources Technology Associate of Science No courses missing [FOR] Forestry Technology Certificate of Achievement [HRC] Hospitality Management, Hotel Emphasis Associate of Science No courses missing HRC 18, HRC 20, HRC 24, HRC 27 [HRC] Hospitality Management, Hotel Emphasis Certificate of Achievement HRC 24, HRC 27, HRC 18 [HRC] Culinary Arts Associate of Science HRC 10, HRC 11, HRC 12, HRC 18, HRC 20, HRC 21, HRC 22, HRC 24, HRC 13 [HRC] Culinary Arts Certificate of Achievement HRC 10, HRC 11, HRC 12, HRC 13, HRC 18, HRC 21, HRC 22 [HRC] Restaurant Management Associate of Science HRC 10, HRC 18, HRC 20, HRC 27, HRC 24, HRC 11 [HRC] Restaurant Management Certificate of Achievement [LA] Liberal Arts: Agriculture Associate of Arts HRC 10, HRC 18 AG 52 AG 30, AG 23, AG 7, AG 17, AG 51, AG 52, CHEM 1A, CEHM 1B, CHEM 3, CHEM 8 [LA] Liberal Arts: Behavioral and Social Science Associate of Arts POLYSC 12, POLSC 20, POLSC 30, PSYCH 2, PSYCH 10, PSYCH 20, HIST 20 ANTH 1, ANTH 4, ANTH 5, ANTH 6, ECON 20, GEOG 2, HIST 20, HIST 21, JOURN 5, POLSC 3, POLSC 12, POLSC 20, POLSC 30, PSYCH 2, PSYCH 10, PSYCH 20, SOC 3, SOC 9, ANTH 2 AJ 5, ANTH 1, ANTH 4, ANTH 5, ANTH 6, ECON 20, GEOG 2, HIST 20, HIST 21, JOURN 5, POLSC 3, POLSC 12, POLSC 20, POLSC 30, PSYCH 2, PSYCH 20, SOC 9, SOC 10, ANTH 2 [LA] Liberal Arts: Business Associate of Arts No courses missing BUS 18, ECON 20 [LA] Liberal Arts: Fine Arts Associate of Arts ART 11, CINE 6, DRAMA 2 ART 3A, ART 19, ART 60, CINE 3, CINE 6, DRAMA 2, DRAMA 26, DRAMA 30A, DRAMA 30B, MUS 1, MUS 2, MUS 3, MUS 14, MUS 25, MUS 25L, ART 11 ART2, ART 60, CINE 2, CINE 3, CINE 6, DRAMA 2, DRAMA 24, DRAMA 26, DRAMA 30A, DRAMA 30B, MUS 1, MUS 2, MUS 3, MUS 12, MUS 25, MUS 25L, CINE 1 CLARUS Corporation Page 46 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Eureka Courses Missing Program Title/ Academic Award April 2010 Del Norte Education Center Courses Missing Mendocino Coast Education Center Courses Missing [LA] Liberal Arts: Humanities, Language & Communication Associate of Arts ENGL 9, ENGL 10, FRNC 2A, FRNC 2B, GERM 2A, GERM 2B, HIST 20 ENGL 9, ENGL 10, ENGL 17, ENGL 60, ENGL 61, FRNC 2A, FRNC 2B, GERM 1A, GERM 1B, GERM 2A, GERM 2B, HIST 20, HIST 21, JPN 1A, JPN 1B, JOURN 5, PHIL 12, ENGL 18 ENGL 10, ENGL 17, ENGL 32, ENGL 60, FRNC 1A, FRNC 1B, FRNC 2A, FRNC 2B, GERM 1A, GERM 1B, GERM 2A, GERM 2B, HIST 20, HIST 21, JPN 1A, JPN 1B, JOURN 5, PHIL 1, PHIL 12, PHIL 20, SNLAN 1A, SNLAN 1B, SPAN 2A, SPAN 2B, SPCH 6 [LA] Liberal Arts: Mathematics Associate of Arts [LA] Liberal Arts: Science Associate of Arts [LA] Liberal Arts: Science Exploration Associate of Arts No courses missing No courses missing BIOL 9 AG 17, AG 18, AG 23, ASTRO 10, ASTRO 11, ASTRO 15A, BIOL 3, BIOL 4, BIOL 5, BIOL 9, BIOL 15, CHEM 1A, CHEM 1B, CHEM 2, CHEM 3, CHEM 8, CET 10, CIS 16, ENVSC 12, ENVSC 15, FOR 1, FOR 5, FOR 51, FOR 60, GEOG 1, GEOL 15, MATH 45, MATH 55, METEO 1, NR 52, NR 54, NR 58, NR 65, OCEAN 10, OCEAN 11, OCEAN 12, PHYS 2A, PHYS 2B, PHYS 4A, PHYS 10, PHYSC 10 AG 17, AG 18, AG 23, ASTRO 10, ASTRO 11, ASTRO 15A, BIOL 3, BIOL 4, BIOL 5, BIOL 8, BIOL 9, CHEM 1A, CHEM 1B, CHEM 3, CET 10, CIS 16, ENVSC 15, FOR 1, FOR 5, FOR 60, GEOL 1, GEOL 15, MATH 45, NR 52, NR 54, NR 58, PHYS 2A, PHYS 2B, PHYS 4A, PHYS 10 [MT] CADD/CAM Design & Manufacturing Associate of Science [MT] CADD/CAM Design & Manufacturing Certificate of Achievement [MT] Manufacturing Technology Associate of Science [MT] Manufacturing Technology Certificate of Achievement [MS] Marine Science Associate of Science DT 63 DT 63 No courses missing No courses missing BIOL 4, BIOL 5, BIOL 18, BIOL 26, BIOL 35, BIOL 120P, BT 50, CHEM 1A, CHEM 1B, GEOL 1, PHYS 2A, PHYS 2B [MS] Marine Science Certificate of Achievement BIOL 4, BIOL 5, BIOL 18, BIOL 26, BIOL 35, BIOL 120P, BT 50, CHEM 1A, CHEM 1B, GEOL 1, PHYS 2A, PHYS 2B [MA] Medical Assisting Associate of Science [MA] Medical Assisting Certificate of Achievement [NH] Natural History Certificate of Recognition BT 114 BUS 152 GEOL 1, GEOL 40, GEOL 99, BIOL 9, BIOL 22, BIOL 23, BIOL 35, BIOL 120L, GEOL 1, GEOL 40 CLARUS Corporation Page 47 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods Program Title/ Academic Award [NURS] Licensed Vocational Nursing Associate of Science [NURS] Licensed Vocational Nursing Certificate of Achievement [NURS] Registered Nursing Associate of Science [NURS] LVN to RN ‐ Upgrade Associate of Science [NURS] LVN to RN ‐ Upgrade Certificate of Achievement [WT] Welding Technology Certificate of Achievement [WT] Electric Arc & Oxyacetylene Welding Certificate of Recognition [WT] MIG & TIG Welding Certificate of Recognition Eureka Courses Missing April 2010 Del Norte Education Center Courses Missing Mendocino Coast Education Center Courses Missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing No courses missing WT 91, WT 67 No courses missing WT 91 1
Footnote: Gray shaded area indicates academic award not offered at that site.
Chart 30 presents the summary of the curriculum completion analysis for the three primary sites. Each
degree in the catalog for the College of the Redwoods for 2009-2010 is listed in the first column of Chart 30.
The second column, entitled “Eureka Courses Missing,” contains the courses that are required for the
curriculum that have not been offered by the College on the Eureka Campus for each curriculum area in the
last four years. The courses listed in this column have not been offered by the College in the last four years
which would make it difficult for the students to have completed a degree in a timely manner. The notation
“No courses missing” means that all of the courses required for the curriculum have been offered at least once
in the last four years. The gray shading in the chart are indicates that the academic award is not offered at a
particular site. The third column outlines the courses missing for the academic awards offered at the Del
Norte Center and the fourth column notes the missing courses for the academic awards offered at the
Mendocino Coast Education Center. (For course completion details for other sites, see Appendix D, Table 3).
Chart 31-A. Analysis Of Within Semester Curriculum Scheduling Of Business Certificate Of Recognition
Desktop Publishing, Fall 2009
CLARUS Corporation Page 48 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Within Semester Curriculum Scheduling. Another issue facing the College of the Redwoods with
respect to curriculum is the scheduling of curriculum areas or academic programs within a semester. In other
words, for a curriculum area or program, can the student actually build a schedule of classes in that semester
that is convenient for them to attend – or are there hours of time between classes offered and students have
to come back time and again? As seen in Chart 31-A, only two of the required courses for the Business
Certificate of Recognition Desktop Publishing were offered in Fall 2009 at the Eureka Campus. BT16 was
offered from 11:30am to 2:25pm Tuesday/ Thursday and DM70A was offered from 6:15pm to 9:10pm on
Tuesday/ Thursday. Although the courses were offered the same days on the Eureka Campus, the student
would have a four hour wait between classes.
Chart 31-B. Analysis Of Within Semester Curriculum Scheduling Of Business Certificate Of Recognition
Desktop Publishing, Spring 2010
Examining the courses offered for the Certificate of Recognition Desktop Publishing on the Eureka Campus
for Spring 2010, developing a convenient schedule for the student would be even more difficult (see Chart 31B). On Monday/ Wednesday, BT16 is offered from 10:00am to 12:55pm. On Tuesday/ Thursday, BT17 is
offered at 2:30pm to 5:25pm and DM70A is offered from 6:00pm to 8:55pm. A student would have to attend
classes four days at the Eureka Campus – morning on two days and afternoon and evenings on the other two
days to obtain the courses for the certificate. The issue for many students is that they cannot attend classes
morning, afternoons, and evenings in a given semester. The College should examine the curriculum
scheduling within a semester for all academic awards using the ClassTracks software and determine what
programs should be offered during the day, the evening, and online. This will make it easier for the students
to commit to attending and will allow for multiple markets to attend classes convenient for them, as well as
provide marketing an opportunity to communicate new program choices at the College.
CLARUS Corporation Page 49 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 32. Scheduling Of General Education Humanities, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
General Education Courses. In addition to inputting the required courses for the degrees offered by the
College, the general education requirements by area for the CSU (California State University) and UC
(University of California) transfer degrees were input into the ClassTracks program to analyze how many of
the general education courses are being offered and how frequently the general education courses are offered.
As seen in Chart 32, almost all of the general education courses that can be offered for transfer in Humanities
have at least been offered by the College of the Redwoods at least one or two semester – usually one section.
The question that the College must address is whether they have enough of a student population of be
offering almost all of the general education classes or whether they should consolidate the number of general
education courses being offered to reduce minimizing enrollments across so many options. As seen in Chart
32, English 18: American Literature Civil War to WWII has been offered Fall 2006 and then again in Spring
2009. The first question is whether English 18 is a course that is required for a degree or transfer for students
attending the College of the Redwoods.
Chart 33. Scheduling Of General Education ENGL 18, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
CLARUS Corporation Page 50 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 33 provides a closer examination of English 18. In Fall 2006, a cross listed section with Honors was
offered as was another session with only a 34 percent fill rate. The same scenario was seen in the Spring of
2009. With the low fill rates, the question is whether this general education course needs to be offered at all at
the College?
Chart 34. Comparison Of General Education Courses Listed As Options By CSU And UC And General
Education Courses Offered By The College Of The Redwoods, Fall 2006 To Spring 2010
100
C SU Ge n Eds A. Com m unic ation
C SU Ge n Eds B. Sc ie ntific Inquir y And
Quantita tive Re as oning
80
C SU Ge n Eds C. Ar ts A nd H uma nit ie s
60
C SU Ge n Eds D. Soc ia l Scie nc e s
49
40
30
33
36
33 35
35
31
28
35
C SU Ge n Eds E. Life long Le ar ning
39
Gen Ed A. N atur al Sc ie nce
18
20
6
7
5
6
Gen Ed B . Soc ial Sc ie nce
7
0
5
Gen Ed C . H uma nit ie s
Gend Ed D . La ngua ge A nd R ationa lity
Courses
Offered By College
In an effort to provide an analysis of whether too many general education courses are being offered at the
College of the Redwoods, the number of general education courses that are recommended by the CSU and
UC systems for transfer are presented in Chart 34 on the left side of the graph. On the right side of the graph,
the number of the general education courses for the CSU and UC system that have been offered by the
College of the Redwoods in the last four years are noted. Calculating the percentage of courses offered for
each of the CSU and UC general education areas, the majority of the courses have been offered: 100 percent
of CSU General Education Communication courses, 93 percent of CSU General Education Scientific Inquiry
and Quantitative Reasoning courses, 55 percent of CSU General Education Arts And Humanities courses, 97
percent of CSU General Education Social Sciences courses, 100 percent of CSU General Education Lifelong
Learning courses, 94 percent General Education Natural Science courses, 100 percent of the General
Education Social Science courses, 80 percent General Education Humanities courses, and 100 percent
General Education Language and Rationality courses.
CLARUS Corporation Page 51 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Chart 35. Core And Additional Courses For Areas Of Emphasis For Liberal Arts Associate Degree
AOE Science Education 0
AOE Science
57
7
21
AOE Math 2 5
AOE Humanities And Communications 0
43
AOE Fine Arts 0
30
AOE Business 0 9
AOE Behavioral And Social Science
7
AOE Agriculture 3
43
12
0
20
40
Core Courses Required
60
80
100
Additional Courses
Finally, the number of courses required for the areas of emphasis (AOE) for the Associate in Liberal Arts is
presented in Chart 35. The number of core courses from which a student must choose to complete courses for
the area of emphasis is presented in burgundy in the graph in Chart 35 and the number of additional courses
they can choose to complete the area of emphasis is presented in blue. For the majority of the areas of
emphasis, only 18 credits are required – or six courses. More than five times the number of courses required
are offered for the areas of emphasis in behavioral and social science, humanities and communications, and
science education. Again, the question facing the College of the Redwoods is whether there are enough
students to take all these classes, or whether fewer classes should be offered to meet the requirements of the
area of emphasis and increase the fill rates of the courses offered?
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods should appoint a faculty committee to examine
all the general education courses being offered for the CSU and UC transfer and a determination
made if too many general education courses are being offered, thus spreading enrollments too thin
over too many courses. The other issue that the faculty committee should examine is whether the
College is offering too many courses for the liberal arts degree areas of emphasis (AOE).
Recommendations For Curriculum Scheduling The College of the Redwoods needs to examine the ability of the student to complete courses. From the
analysis presented in this report, it is very difficult for students to complete the academic awards offered by
the College over the last four years. On the Eureka Campus, Del Norte Education Center, and the Mendocino
Coast Education Center, academic awards cannot be completed in four years.
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods needs to determine if the courses that have not
been offered in the last four years are mandatory for the students to complete the degree programs.
If the courses are not mandatory, then the curriculum should be revised as needed. If the courses
are mandatory, then they should be offered at least once a year, enabling students to complete the
academic awards as noted in the catalog.
Based on the analysis of the off-site locations (Arcata Instructional site, Eureka Downtown site, Klamath/
Trinity site, the McKinleyville site, and online) from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010, several of the academic awards
are very close to being completed at this time. (See Appendix D, Table 3 for an analysis of all the academic
awards offered at the College and how close the off-site locations are to offering a degree or each of the areas,
as well as online.) The College needs to determine if a few courses are missing for a degree, then the College
CLARUS Corporation Page 52 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 needs to decide if they want to offer the degree at the site and must obtain approval. The College should also
determine how much of a degree can be completed at an off-site and assure the students that those
components will be offered.
Recommendation: The College of the Redwoods needs to determine what the actual
programming for the off-site locations should be. Should the off-site locations provide the first year
of a degree and, if so, which degrees? Is the primary focus of the off-site locations to offer general
education transfer? And if so, what courses? The off-sites should begin to add courses that are
needed for degrees if the College determines to add degrees to the off-sites.
After the courses that are missing for completion of the academic awards noted in the catalog of the College of
the Redwoods are either offered or the curriculum updated, the College should communicate the degree
availability to students. It is also recommended that the courses that are only offered once a year be identified
and marked in the curriculum with the semester they are offered so students can do a better job of planning
their schedule for the degree areas.
Recommendation: Develop a degree sheet for each curriculum at the College of the Redwoods by
location that will identify the sequence of the courses offered for the academic awards to assist
students in planning degree completion.
Personnel at the College of the Redwoods expressed concern that students could not complete programs at
the College and it appears to be true based on the curriculum analysis. Multiple courses are only offered once
a year which makes it more difficult for the students to create their schedules. Personnel the College of the
Redwoods suggested that a two-year schedule would assist both students and advisors at the College to
complete programs.
Recommendation: Develop a two-year schedule for the College of the Redwoods. Create a
schedule master and examine curriculum offerings to ensure that programs can be completed and
classes are offered at least once a year, if not every other year. Academic areas should review
program curriculum and develop a master schedule of offerings. This should be communicated and
coordinated with student services to develop curriculum guides for students. Finally, communicate
the two-year schedule to the students.
Based on the analysis of the within-semester curriculum scheduling, it is very difficult for a student to attend
day only, evening only, or online only and complete an academic award. The College of the Redwoods needs
to target specific academic awards for targeted scheduling. The College should determine which programs,
like some of the business certificate programs, can be offered in the evening only over a two year time frame.
This would allow the College to market complete evening programs to an adult market. Programs that are
likely to have a younger, full-time market should be targeted for day delivery over two years.
Recommendation: Define specific complete academic programs for evening, day, and online
delivery. Market these programs to the appropriate markets in the advertising campaigns for the
College. If the College is considering offering two-year associate degrees in the evening, the College
needs to develop accelerated classes to allow the programs to be completed in a two-year time
frame.
CLARUS Corporation Page 53 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Appendices CLARUS Corporation Page 54 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Appendix A. Cancellation Analysis CLARUS Corporation Page A‐1 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Appendix B. Efficiency Analysis CLARUS Corporation Page B‐1 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Appendix C. Facility Utilization CLARUS Corporation Page C‐1 Scheduling Scan Report For The College Of The Redwoods April 2010 Appendix D. Curriculum Analysis CLARUS Corporation Page D‐1