Right on schedule: thank goodness for technology: sophisticated classroom-and-facilities management software is fast replacing manual scheduling. (Technology).

Keeping track of meetings, classes, and audio-video equipment was never an easy task for instructors. And now that faculty members vie to have their classes meet in the (still scarce) "smart classrooms" that are packed with computers and gadgetry for electronic presentations, scheduling academic facilities is an even tougher proposition. Then there's distance education, which contributes its own set of urgent scheduling needs. (Students who may never even see a classroom, still need to be scheduled for exams.)

With so many new factors now in play--and with colleges and universities trying to rein in operating costs at the same time--it's no wonder the perennial quest to make efficient use of instructional and meeting spaces is more complex than ever.

RIGHT CLASS, RIGHT ROOM

When it comes to course scheduling, fuller and more efficient use of classrooms is a primary objective for schools. A target often mentioned by school administrators is 30 hours per classroom per week, which represents a 75 percent rate of occupancy--a substantial improvement over current rates. The problem in reaching that level of efficiency is often attributed to the reluctance of faculty and students to schedule classes throughout the available hours and days. (Classrooms may be available in late-afternoon and evening hours, for instance, but commuting professors prefer to Leave campus earlier than that. Those same rooms are often vacant at 8 or 9 a.m. because students prefer late morning classes.) But a faculty committee at Northwestern University Looking at the issues involved found that--contrary to generally held beliefs--it is room characteristics, class size, equipment requirements, and working around "low-tech" Limitations (such as poor acoustics) that are actually the key factors in good scheduling. In other words: getting the right class into the right room. Fortunately, classroom/facilities management software with the sophistication to factor those different needs and criteria, and create optima[ assignments and schedules, is beginning to replace manual and older automated methods that were unable to cope with the competing demands for choice rooms.

SCHEDULING ONLINE EVENTS

And now a new kind of scheduling need has taken shape: the "electronic event." Online discussions, teleconferences, and exams can entail almost as much administrative overhead as in-person events. Not surprisingly, where distance education has flourished, clerical time spent on scheduling has been surprisingly high. But that's where self-scheduling software comes in: The Center for Distance Learning (CDL) at City Colleges of Chicago has found that the Web-based, self-scheduling system they implemented in February of 2001 (TimeTrade from TimeTrade Systems, www.timetrade.com), has since enabled 85 percent of their students to schedule their own exams online--an estimated savings of $100,000 annually in clerical costs. (TimeTrade's application service provider model costs $600 per month and up, depending upon features included and resources managed.)

CHOOSING THE RIGHT SYSTEM

Of course, saving that kind of money in your own institution isn't possible unless you have the right system for your needs in place, and that means covering all the bases when you set out to evaluate and choose a classroom-and-facilities scheduling system.

Identify purpose. Before you even begin to draw up a short list of potential vendors and products, make sure you have carefully evaluated your needs, say the experts. Understanding the basic types of products available will help you to see which category your needs may fall into. The three basic product types:

* Batch-oriented scheduling modules are included in comprehensive administrative information systems such as Datatel's Colleague (www.datatel.com), SCT's Banner (www.sct.com), and PeopleSoft (www.peoplesoft.com). They are best at optimizing and assigning rooms campus-wide, for a semester at a time.

* Event-oriented systems include CollegeNET's Series25 (www. corp.collegenet.com), Steltor's CorporateTime (www.steltor.com), and TimeTrade. These products directly enable scheduling of lectures and special events by the sponsors.

* Meeting-maker systems include Facility Innovations's Time and Place (www.facilityinnovations.com), MeetingMaker (www.meetingmaker.com), and Microsoft's Outlook (www.microsoft.com). These products are designed to facilitate the scheduling of meetings and meeting spaces.

System requirements. Campus selection committees, usually consisting of department-level staff from registrar and events-scheduling offices (and sometimes complemented by IT staff), typically specify technical and usage criteria when evaluating software solutions for scheduling and facilities management. As in all IT product choices today, the desire to stay in the mainstream of evolving standards is paramount, given the complex environments in which these systems operate, and the need to make them accessible to a variety of computer operating systems and modes of connecting to the campus network. Two years ago, the technical preference for software systems was for client-server architecture, but these days, most users favor Web-centered solutions. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is now required for networked directories, and Java and Visual Basic applets are well regarded. Compatibility with emerging Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards such as Calendar Access Protocol is also a common purchase requirement; these are functions that should be carefully discussed with any vendors whose products you are considering.

Ease of Use. Because these software programs are typically installed and used outside the core IT units on campus, they need to be easy to install and maintain. User testimonials posted on vendor Web sites often include comments reflecting on short and simple start-up. Training requirements need to be minimal for the system's administrators, and not necessary at all for end-users. If client software is required, it has to be capable of being updated automatically over the network. Automatic notification by e-mail (regarding changes and new classroom and facilities scheduling information) is also highly desirable because it lessens the need for students and faculty to continually check the scheduling Web pages. Needless to say, the systems need to show schedule status in real time; queries need to be easy and obvious to perform; and cross-platform capability is a must (the system has to work as well for Macintosh and Unix/Linux as for Windows).

Accessibility. With the explosion of PDA devices and wireless networking, connectivity to those technical environments has joined the essential List for evaluating products and vendors. Most classroom and facilities scheduling products now synchronize with the various PDAs, as well as with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. While the trend towards scheduling-management software and classroom-and-facilities management products has been building, it has been building against the background of even more rapid growth of the personal information management (PIM) applications, and so has had to accommodate them. The ability to publish calendars to ordinary Web pages and to include users not registered in the classroom-and-facilities scheduling system further stretches these products in the direction of open-standards computing.

Pricing. There has been a fierce round of buyouts and consolidations among the classroom-and-facilities scheduling vendors--and still other instances of company name changes or re-organizations. To wit: Series25, now marketed by CollegeNET (www.corp. collegenet.com) owns the largest market share, based on the history of its R25 and Schedule25 product sales. CorporateTime, now the product of Steltor, has landed major accounts in the past two years and has the highest profile among large institutions that tend to adopt and host complex systems. Event Management Systems, from Dean Evans and Associates (www.dea.com) lists over 500 higher education customers of all sizes. TimeTrade bills itself as the leader among Web-centric systems. (Several vendors offer hosted services as an alternative to acquiring and running the software.) Pricing for software starts at about $15,000 for a purchased system, or $600/month for vendor-hosted services. Prices vary according to the number of services included, the number of servers on which the software is installed, the number of rooms managed, and the number of simultaneous users.

Shopping for classroom-and-facilities scheduling software is relatively easy because the market has developed to the point where there are good, competitive choices among vendors and products. Some of the vendors mentioned here have online demonstrations of their systems on their Web sites. Trade show exhibits are another good opportunity to try out the software and ask questions of the vendors as you narrow your selection. But with the companies and products changing rapidly, you will want to be sure to ask for unedited lists of clients using the current releases of the software. Ask those clients what other products they considered and the reasons for their final choice. Decide whether you want to run the application yourself, or subscribe to it as an outsourced service. Fortunately, there are now plenty of good products out there, ready to streamline your processes.

Tom Warger is a technology consultant for Edutech International (www.edutech-int.com).