Section and Meeting Editing

When scheduling decisions are made, Ad Astra admin users can edit the details of a meeting or a section. All edits will be retained within Ad Astra, even if data is ingested from the Student Information System.  Learn how to change a user's permissions. 

Access to Section and Meeting Details

Editing section and meetings take place on the details screen. The application you are accessing the details from will determine how you access the details.

Align

After you have selected a course from the course list in Align, go to the Sections tab to find the individual sections associated with a course.

When the "List" is toggled on, you can select an individual section to view the section and the meeting details. 

Monitor

After you have selected a course from the course list in Monitor, go to the Sections tab to find the individual sections associated with a course.

Schedule

From the List view, simply select a section.

Editing Section and Meeting Details

Within a selected section you will see section and meeting details. Once you are here, if your permissions allow editing, you will see options to Edit or Clone the Section, as well as Edit the meeting(s). 

If the Edit button is clicked, the section or meeting fields will become outlined and editable as applicable. 

Section and meeting fields that have been edited since the last import are highlighted with an outline so you can easily see what has changed. Hover over the corner of the box to see the previously imported value.

Section Fields:

1. Term: Not editable in Ad Astra. Note that if you modify the term for an existing section in your SIS and you have unsynchronized changes pending in Ad Astra, that existing section record may be orphaned and need to be manually deleted.
2. Section ID: Created by the student information and can not be edited.
3. Section Code: A section code can be modified to be any value important to an institution.
   
   
4. Status: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the setting page.
5. Part of Term: Change a Part Of Term by selecting from the drop-down. Information is ingested from the student information system.
   
   
6. Campus: Select the desired campus. 
7. Max Enrollment: Maximum allowed enrollment for the section and related to the number of seats offered. Updating this number will change the seats as well.
   
   
8. Delivery Method: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
9. Actual Enrollment: Number of students enrolled in a section, not editable.
10. Max Enrollment
11. Section Title: Editing the text here will change the name of the section.
    
    
12. Projected Enrollment
13. Seats: Controlled by the max enrollment, if the max enrollment is edited the seats will update to reflect the same number.
14. Billing Hours: Credit equivalent hours which the institution charges for credit courses.
15. Credit Hours: Credit hours assigned to the section.
16. Attendance: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
17. Grade Mode: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
18. Session: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
19. Cross-List: Input the cross-list code, if applicable. 
    If your SIS is Banner and you utilize the write-back functionality (section publishing), this field will NOT update in Banner. If it is edited in Ad Astra, it will not publish and will be overwritten by import. These changes must be made in Banner.
20. Approval Code: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
21. Instructional Method: Available to select from a dropdown menu, editable in the settings page.
22. Tuition and Fee Waiver: Select this box if the tuition and fee should be waived for this section.
23. Student Instructions: This input box is to have notes, helpful information, or instructions that are student-facing for them to have at enrollment. For example: “This is an online class. Online classes are available for access on Friday before class starts. Online classes require that you log in no later than the first Monday of each class by 8:00 pm.”

Meeting Fields:

1. Meeting Days: Choose a day/days for a meeting by clicking on the day represented. If the day of the week is not selected, it will have a dotted circle and gray fill. When a day of the week has been selected, the circle will have a blue fill.
   
   
2. Date Range: Modifying a date can be done in two ways.
   
   Input a date value. For example, a date range of January 17, 2022, to May 13, 2022, would be keyed in as 01/22/2022 to 05/13/2022.
   
   
   Select a date range from a calendar. A user can also select the calendar icon to the right and select the specified date for the start and click OK. Then select the second calendar icon to choose an end date and click OK.
   
3. Time: The way you are able to edit time will depend on your user role in the system.
   Contributor roles (see Manage Users) can change a time to one that falls within a defined meeting pattern. The available meeting pattern time will display in the drop-down based on the meeting days selected above. The times will also indicate if a meeting pattern is ‘standard’ and/or ‘on grid’. Meeting patterns can only be altered by admins. Learn about meeting pattern settings.
   
   
   
   If the user has an Admin role, they have the ability to use the Time Picker toggle (Ad hoc time selector) that will allow for a time to be selected outside of a defined meeting pattern.
   
   The desired time can be keyed in manually into the input box,
   
   
   Or the time can be selected with the drop down in 5 minute increments.
   
4. Override Contact Hours: Select this checkbox when the meeting does not have a designated meeting pattern (i.e. an online meeting)
   • If a user unselects the Override Contact Hours, the Contact Hours Per Day, Contact Hours Per Week, and Total Contact Hours will reset to have a value of 0. 
5. Contact Hours Per Day: This field is only available for editing once the Override Contact Hours has been selected. If no value is given, this field will default to 0.
6. Contact Hours Per Week: This field is only available for editing once the Override Contact Hours has been selected. If no value is given, this field will default to 0.
7. Total Contact Hours: This field is only available for editing once the Override Contact Hours has been selected. If no value is given, this field will default to 0.
8. Meeting Credit Hours: This field will default to the same value as Section Credit Hours.  
9. Building: Select the desired Building.
10. Room: See the Editing Room Assignment section below.
11. Contact Hours: This field will populate based on the Meeting Type that is selected for Banner institutions. 
12. Instructor: One or multiple instructors can be added to a section, with the ability to mark an instructor as primary for the section.
    
    You can find an instructor by typing a name into the input box to narrow the list or search by an instructor's ID if known. Use the magnifying glass to do an advanced search for an instructor.
    
    
    With the advanced search for instructors, you can choose from a variety of filters to choose faculty candidates.
    
    
    To delete an instructor from a section, click on the trash can icon next to their name.
    
    Banner customers may use the percent responsible, percent session, and session indicator fields to indicate how an instructor is allocated and to which session they are associated. Typically, percent responsible would be used for a multi-instructor scenario, and percent session would be used for cross-listed sections where the same instructor is listed for both sections.
    
13. Modality: Institutions have varying ways to represent course modality and is not directly editable from this editing page. Learn more about editing modality settings. 
14. Instructional Method: Selected from a drop-down of defined values from the settings. The Instructional Method settings can be in the Academic Settings.
15. Session Indicator: A value that can be altered by an institution to a value representative of their system settings and workflow.
16. Meeting Type

Editing Room Assignment

To have accurate room availability, users will need to have a term, meeting days, and time configured for the section before selecting a room assignment. The room drop-down selection will display basic information about the room, including whether the room is available, the room type, and the max capacity. This room drop-down list is automatically filtered to show rooms that can at least hold the section’s max enrollment or more. This drop-down can also be filtered by room type, see the Meeting Type to Room Type Mapping in the Academic Settings article. Users can select any room in the drop-down.

If a suitable room isn’t found within the room drop-down list, users may select the magnifying glass to view an unfiltered list of rooms for the selected building.

As users modify a section meeting pattern, campus, or building, the room dropdown will reset to check availability and display an updated room list.

There are some scenarios, typically for online or hybrid sections, that do not have a meeting pattern. Availability will not be displayed when a meeting pattern has not been specified.

Curious to view double-booked rooms? Check out the Double Booked Rooms report available within Report!

Adding Sections

On the Sections tab when viewing the course's section list, you can quickly add a new section by clicking the add section button at the top left of the list.

The new section will appear in the list, highlighted in blue, and you can click on the new section to add or edit details to the new section.

The new section requires a section code be added before changes can be saved.

Deleting Sections

To delete a section, you must open the section from the course's section list.

When the "List" is toggled on, you can select an individual section. 

In edit mode, click Delete. You can select either Planned Delete or Permanent Delete.

Planned Delete

If a user selects Planned Delete for the section, a confirmation dialog will appear to confirm the users selection. The deleted section will appear in the section list as planned delete. In order for planned delete sections to be removed, they may be published back to the SIS or editing capabilities must be removed for your institution and allow an ingest from the Student Information System. Most users will want to ensure all edits have been recorded or published to the SIS before removing editing capabilities to ensure no data is lost.

If Planned Delete was selected in error, you can also restore the section by drilling into the details of a planned deleted section, clicking Edit, and then clicking Restore.

Permanent Delete

If a user selects Permanent Delete for the section, a confirmation dialog will appear to confirm the users selection. The permanently deleted section will be completely removed from Ad Astra and there is no way to restore this section. If this section still exists in your SIS, it will be reingested during the next scheduled run.

Cloning Sections

To clone a section, you must open the section from the course's section list to view the section.

After selecting the Clone button, the new cloned section will appear with fields copied from the original section. All meetings that are associated with the section will be cloned.  The Section Code, Actual Enrollment, and Waitlist Total fields will not be cloned from the original section.  The Section Code field will be highlighted, prompting the user to create a new Section Code.  If a Section Code is not entered, the section will become Unassigned.

Section Publishing and Section Export

Customers using the Ellucian Banner will have the option to write back any section and meeting edits back to their Student Information System. Learn about section publishing. 

For institutions that either cannot or do not wish to use section publishing and write-back edits to their student information system, one of the questions will be "how do we know what was edited in Ad Astra so that we can put those changes into our SIS".

To help support the section scheduling and schedule building experience, an export has been added to the Sections list within Align as well as to the Schedule app.

Align:

Schedule App:

The section export includes fields available from the list view as well as additional fields found when viewing a Section. Any value that has been changed or updated in Ad Astra will have a tag labeled "(edited)" in the spreadsheet generated by the export.  The "(edited)" label will be listed after the updated value of the field.

In the below example of the export, ACCT 2101 has updated values for Max Enrollment and Seats. ARTS 1001 has an updated value for Section Meeting Type. The updated value appears with "(edited)" immediately following the value.