The trouble with timetables

Squeeze a balloon one way and it expands another. Alan Bowles reflects on how to fit the courses in. Animals mark their territory and defend it to the last in order to survive. Similar ancestral instinct survives in any head of department defending his academic herd from attack by the bureaucratic hyena.

The analogy might give an insight into the planning difficulties people responsible for timetabling face. It may be logical to share classroom and computer laboratories across many departments, but to possess them for sole use of one's own group is a move in keeping with the human animal instincts. Posters on walls, printing presses (never used) or gadgets in cupboards make rooms special for the use of single groups of students. It may be fair to spread the teaching load across the working week in an even manner, but time-honoured traditions demand that other watering holes are visited on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

Many dilemmas exist in higher education. From my standpoint, modularity is a dilemma. Does it broaden the learner's horizons allowing wider choice of subject matter or does it produce a degree in "odds and ends"?

It certainly enables modules of the courses to be evaluated, costed and combined. It also brings home the economic cost of 1:1 tutorials. Yet debates with one's tutors may be the one characteristic of the Oxbridge students which made them the "elite" over centuries. Such tutorials certainly have to be rationed in today's economic climate.

Choice for the student sounds an enviable target, but only controlled choice is possible. If we allow free choice, we will run out of the realistic working week. Choose one out of many and timetablers can see ways of making it possible; choose three out of a few and we need to change the concept of a week to fit it in; put the students on one module altogether and there is not a lecture theatre big enough to fit them all in; split them and the lecturer cost rises and his or her boredom factor rises presenting the same material more than once. Shall we be free-choice modular, slot modular or credit modular?

The whole issue resembles having a balloon which is squeezed in one part, only to expand in another. Timetables and resource issues may pop quite suddenly like the balloon.Timetabling is an integrated process.

It is illogical to think of "course to time, lecturer to course and course to room timetabling" as separate processes even though this is an easy way for our brains to absorb such information. Surely it is a task ideally suited for tackling by computer?

The process of timetabling needs rules, and these have to have management backing. Often, articulating these rules is so difficult for an institution that, coupled with the territorial instinct, the computer is said to fail as it is easier to criticise the computer program and its operators than to face up to the decision-making process to make use of staff, student and physical resources as efficiently as possible.

Space accounts typically for 20 per cent of the cost of education provision. And making judgements on what are the reasonable space requirements for different disciplines is not easy and is intimately related to the task of timetabling. Why should art students not have individual spaces to produce their work; be able to work on a two-metre canvas and have space to stand back to assess their work? It sounds appropriate but so easily this means they need individual areas of 102metres.

At De Montfort University, that is believed to cost Pounds 71/m2/per annum. A large proportion of the income is spent on the provision of space. So, what price culture? Should business students subsidise art students? There are no right answers but at least we should know what we are doing and the facts.

Which departments should be where? Should performing arts move to the same site as fine arts and humanities? Can we provide the sprung dance floor, the music salon, the theatre spaces if we do and does the argument change if humanities is separated into another resource unit? The capital cost of space changes is very high - typically Pounds 1,0002metres for new and useable space.

Even in this arena, efficiency arguments pervade. Should we go for the box which solves the problem or is the ambience of the new building vital? This may mean choosing between buying expensive matching furniture to help reduce stress and create opulence or opting for the cheapest fundamental building and contents. As ever, a balance has to be struck.

Statistical graphical interpretation of course loadings, room usage, staff hours are all important in demonstrating effective use of resources across universities and sectors. Those based on a computerised output have the advantage that direct comparison is possible.

When senior managers have so little time, easily absorbed presentation is vital. Even though this data may not be the "truth" it is impartial and the future plan of the timetable can be checked against the reality on the ground.

The future holds video conferencing, distance learning, computer-aided learning and the information superhighway. But each must be evaluated against the same criteria as other methods: cost effectiveness, educational merits and the quality of the preparation of students for society.

Alan Bowles is head of physical resources at De Montfort University.