In the scheduling program as it stands, putting yearlong courses as yearlong locks students into a specific block/period for the entire year, thus denying them the ability to switch teachers and sections at semester. This greatly impacts our students' abilities to take different electives which may occur during the same block.

Our work around was to break a yearlong course into fall and spring semester courses so that a student maintains scheduling flexibility. However, students will forget to select the second semester of the yearlong course, and therefore, creates more backend work and checking to ensure that the student is in the course for the full year.

For reference: Physics is a yearlong elective and we have it currently broken down this way in the scheduling program:

• PHYS101A (Fall Semester)

• PHYS101B (Spring Semester)

So, students will select the fall semester but forget to select the spring semester. This requires cleanup after the request window is close.

MY IDEA: to either

1. create a linking capability between the fall and spring semester courses so that it automatically shows up in the student's schedule or

2. implement a reminder in the course request screen, reminding the student that by selecting the fall semester of a yearlong course, they must also select the spring semester of the course.

This will help with minimizing backend request data cleanup while ensuring that students are properly selecting yearlong courses while maintaining scheduling flexibility.