Admin, Manager and Staff Users with Extra Staff User Access Options can create Rotating Schedules.
Overview
Watch our video on how Rotating Schedules work within Clipboard!
What is a Rotating Schedule?
A Rotating Schedule creates a series of Sessions at a different time or day each week or fortnight for students listed under one Activity. It ensures that students, especially those within school music departments, can have their music lessons scheduled for different times every week or fortnight to avoid missing the same academic classes each week.
Music tutors and administrators can effortlessly set up a Rotating Schedule for groups of students at the start of each term! For efficiency, we don't recommend scheduling and using this feature for only a few weeks at a time.
Key Terms
Session Frequency | How often the Session/music lesson repeats per week or fortnight. For example, John has 1 lesson every week, and Jill has 1 lesson per fortnight. |
Rotation Frequency | How often the Schedule rotates - either every 5 days or 10 days (Week A/B), to mirror the school's academic timetable. |
Rotation Mode | How you would like your rotations to be spaced out. Sequential Mode: Moves the Session down one spot on the Schedule. e.g. 9:00 a.m. one week and 9:30 a.m. the next time the lesson rotates. Spread Mode: Sessions are spaced across the tutor's available times and days in no sequential order. This minimises the chance of academic class disruption for students. However, it means Students must remember their lessons at different times and days, as dictated by their tutor's available time blocks at school. Fixed Mode: Set the same time each week for your music students. This ensures Sessions don’t change times at all from one week/ fortnight, to the next. |
Weekly A/B Schedule | For schools that adopt a fortnightly academic timetable of different subjects and/or class times from Week A to Week B. Staff can set their Available teaching Blocks here for both weeks. This is useful for staff members with differing availability in Week A compared to Week B. |
Available Blocks for staff | Select days and set periods of teaching availability. Regarding breaks, separate your availability for one day and create these as separate blocks, e.g., an A.M. block and a P.M. block. |
Use Cases and Examples
When implementing Rotating Schedules, a simple example would be Jane's violin lessons, which rotate sequentially each week. For instance, she might have an 8:00 a.m. lesson one week, an 8:30 a.m. lesson the next week, and so forth, until her lesson time circles around to 8:00 a.m. again. Her lessons are spread over all the available days and times her tutor teaches at school.
The first example is where:
Session Frequency: Weekly (Sessions every week)
Rotation Frequency: 1 (Rotate every week, 5-day timetable)
Rotation Mode: Sequential
Number of Sessions: 1
A second use case of Rotating Schedules is when students have one Session per week on a fortnightly timetable, with the same lesson time of 9:00 am during weeks 1 and 2. Then, during weeks 3 and 4, their lesson time shifts to 9:30 am, until it circles around to the 9:00 am schedule again. Lessons are spread over all the available days and times her tutor teaches at school.
The second example is where:
Session Frequency: Weekly (Sessions every week)
Rotation Frequency: Fortnightly (Rotate every second week, 10-day timetable)
Rotation Mode: Sequential
Number of Sessions: 2
A third use case would be when a Student has two weekly lessons, with lessons spread over different days to avoid missing the same academic subjects. They want these lessons to be scheduled at different times of the day and week (subject to the tutor's Available Blocks listed).
The third example is where:
Session Frequency: Weekly (Sessions every week)
Rotation Frequency: 1 (Rotate every week, 5-day timetable)
Rotation Mode: Spread
Number of Sessions: 2
Rotating Schedule Demo - Music Tutors
Fixed Rotation Mode
Fixed Rotation Mode Demo
Product Webinar - Fixed Rotation Mode
Watch the video below to see Ed Colyer, Co-Founder and CEO, discuss and demo the Fixed Rotation Mode for Schedules during the Clipboard Product Update Webinar.