Why use it?

The scheduler is a useful activity to book individual or group appointments with students.

It allows you to set available time slots and for students to book themselves into one. Students are also able to cancel their bookings.

You can keep track of attendance, automatically send email notifications and reminders and, optionally, set up a booking form or grade appointments.

Step 1: Add a Scheduler

Go to the course page and Turn editing on. Scroll to the section where you want your Scheduler to be displayed, click Add an activity or resource and pick Scheduler.

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Step 2: Settings

General

Give a Name and an Introduction which explains to the students what the Scheduler is for or any additional instructions.

Options

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Role name of the teacher

This is optional but can be useful information to fill in if the attendant is someone other than the Teacher, for example, a Tutor or an academic adviser.

Mode

Students can book:

• (n) appointments in this Scheduler: only a fixed number of appointments.

• (n) appointments at the time: to initially book only a fixed number of appointments but once these have been attended (i.e. marked as seen) the student can book further (n) appointments.

Booking in groups

One group member can schedule an appointment for the entire group at once.

Guard time

Enter a set amount of time to prevent students from changing their bookings shortly before their appointment.

Default slot duration

Sets the length of each appointment. This will automatically create slots based on the specified duration.

Notifications

If enabled, both students and teachers will receive email notifications and reminders about their appointments.

• Teachers will be notified when a student has booked or cancelled an appointment with them.

• Students will receive confirmation of their bookings and they will be notified if an appointment has been edited, revoked or deleted.

Use notes for appointments

If enabled, you can add notes to the appointments and choose whether or not to make them visible to students.

Grade

Optionally, appointments can be graded.

For students who have booked multiple appointments, set the Grading strategy if you wish them to be graded based on the Mean grade or their Highest grade.

Booking form and student-supplied data

Optionally, you can enable a form to be displayed to students before booking a slot.

The form is a useful way to display Booking instructions to students, or to Let students enter a message, or upload files (e.g. accessibility requests, files to be reviewed during the appointment).

Click Save and display.

Step 3: Add slots

Click Add slots to Add single slot or Add repeated slots.

Set a start and end Date and a Time range for your slots, indicate the Location of the appointments, choose the name of the Teacher that will attend the meetings, Display slot to students from a set date or immediately and optionally set an Email reminder to students about their bookings.

After adding your slots, students will be able to access the Scheduler and start booking appointments.

Step 4: View appointments

My appointments

View your own scheduled slots and booked appointments.

All appointments

View all appointments in the scheduler including, if any, other teacher’s slots.

Overview

From the Overview tab, you can filter to see appointments for yourself or other teachers in the course

Statistics

From the Statistics tab, you can get a summary of all available and attended/unattended slots.

Export

From the Export tab, export appointment data to downloadable files in several formats.

Step 5: Manage slots

Record attendance

Once a student has attended their appointment, go to the Scheduler activity and click on the student profile next to the slot. From the student’s booking page, tick the Attended box, Save changes and click Continue.

Revoke appointments

Click the revoke appointment (thumbs down) icon in the Action column to remove a student from the slot and make it available for others.

Edit slots

To edit an individual slot, click the cog icon in the Action column. Here you can edit settings such as the Date, Duration, the Maximum number of students per slot, the appointment Location or the assigned Teacher.

Delete slots

Click Delete slots to remove slots from the Scheduler in bulk or use the bin icon in the Action column to remove an individual slot.

Schedule by student

If you wish to book appointments on behalf of the students, scroll to the bottom of the Scheduler page to Schedule by Student. In the Action column click Schedule > Schedule in slot.