Councilors are taught traditionally to focus on making sure that the Singletons and Doubletons get placed first. When we’ve worked with the algorithms we found that it’s not as clear-cut as one would initially believe. This is very much dependent on the students’ unique choices and sometimes the auto building would place a selected singleton and then a doubleton, followed by a singleton depending on the best building order that needs to happen, according to your school. There’s no clear formula for this and having the master scheduler of the algorithm is like a captain standing at the front of the ship negotiating through a sea of single and doubletons.

The single and doubletons go hand-in-hand with the conflict matrix that we have improved into the Solution Matrix. From getting the solutions from the solution matrix, the Algorithms get a better understanding and insight as to the way that these courses relate to each other and how they need to be interactively placed on your master schedule.

These two new components, our Solution Matrix and Automated Scheduler Course Placements work interactively with each other and need to have both running in perfect synchronicity, to be able to build a proper master schedule fast with a high student accuracy.

Traditional approach:

You place the singletons and doubletons first and then look at the student conflict matrix and use the student conflicts matrix as a feedback of how well your courses are placed, where conflicts originate and what you need to change. So your courses (singletons and doubletons) drive your student conflicts. This is like going back laying new courses, checking out the conflict matrix and giving your report and feedback from the conflict matrix, which then gives you an indication which courses to go back to, move around or shuffle. Much like taking two steps forward and one step backwards; this is why this process takes so long and you cannot really get speed, a clear direction or momentum.

USA Scheduler approach– Quantum Leap:

We use the student’s courses to indicate how the courses need to be placed right from the start. This turns the old traditional scheduling process completely on its head, meaning that the students choices now advise the way and the order of how the courses should be placed. In letting the students choices be the driving force of the building algorithms, you get a much higher accuracy.

All of this happens via the solution matrix which acts like a translator between the students requests and the scheduler courses. This works much better, is more effective, faster and accurate, to use the students as primary indicators. The momentum and speed that gets generated with this approach is superb.

In Summary:

You do not work hands on with the singletons and doubletons, all of this is done automatically for you and thus you do not need any hand in the manual placements or building of your master schedule.

The Solution Matrix and Automated Building increases your control over the Master Schedule.