With roots dating back to the original colonial colleges in 1766, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey is one of the oldest, highest-ranked institutions of higher education in the United States. The modern university has locations throughout New Jersey, with three regional campuses and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, an expansive academic health care centre.
The university’s flagship location in New Brunswick is comprised of five different geographic campuses on 2,685 acres with 640 buildings. Rutgers has the second-largest bus fleet in the state, with students taking up to two hundred seventy thousand course-related trips per week prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the university’s recent strategic planning process and Rutgers 2030, the university’s physical master planning initiative, a primary objective for Rutgers—New Brunswick was to reduce unnecessary course-related travel for students and, more importantly, reduce student’s time to degree. Unnecessary travel could include a student having to travel to a different campus to take a class that was available closer to where they lived, but not accessible due to scheduling conflicts.
“Students were spending too much time on the bus, taking time away from their studies, from class time, or from their own out-of-class activities. We looked at a number of different potential solutions. The principal recommendation that came out of the task force following the Physical Master Plan was to look at implementing a modern course scheduling system.”
—Paul Hammond, Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology and Instruction, Rutgers—New Brunswick.
Rutgers—New Brunswick offers over twelve thousand course sections a semester. Before implementing INFOSILEM Timetabler, they simply made a rough copy of the previous like semester’s offering with some tweaking. That method didn’t account for variables like changes in enrollment trends or schools and programs that were growing or shrinking. Rutgers—New Brunswick needed specialized software that would allow them to create schedules that would offer courses where and when they would best support the student academic experience.
Although Rutgers was already a long-time user of INFOSILEM Sectioner, the university’s business process and due diligence required that they put out a request for information and then a request for proposals to all the major scheduling software vendors. After a large selection committee reviewed the extensive vendor proposals, the committee unanimously chose the Infosilem | Berger-Levrault solution. Says Hammond, “The Infosilem product was RFP committee’s unanimous choice.”
The implementation included three main aspects: technical; training; and change management. A key part of the technical implementation ¾ extracting, transferring, and loading data from the student information system to the Infosilem system) presented challenges which are to be expected with this type of implementation. Since the current student information system is “homegrown,” it had some idiosyncrasies that required mapping finesse to align the two systems. “The Infosilem | Berger-Levrault team was an integration partner from the very beginning on the technical implementation, assisting with data mapping and setting up servers,” says Hammond. “They also assisted our central team with a train the trainer model, where they were training staff in the central office to be able to then train the department scheduling staff.”
The Infosilem | Berger-Levrault team worked with the Rutgers team to run test simulations, which were important steps in the implementation. The first simulation was a dry run using an abridged data set; then the next two simulations included more complex data with increased precision and coordination with departments about the type of data needed. Switching from one concept of scheduling to another that may require people to teach in different rooms and at different times was a big change for some departments, down to the faculty level. In order for the implementation to be a success, the implementation team had to prepare the university community for the change. Although only three simulations were originally planned, the Rutgers team decided to add a fourth simulation to the schedule to increase user confidence and be ready when the system went live.
As in all projects of this size and complexity, unknown challenges arose as the implementation progressed. For example, Rutgers—New Brunswick used three different period grids for different geographic campuses, which is uncommon for academic institutions. The Infosilem | Berger-Levrault team made specific code changes to the software to customize it for Rutgers based on their needs.
“ Infosilem | Berger-Levrault team made adjustments and helped refine the software in ways that were not workarounds; they became core to the platform.”
—Paul Hammond
Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology and Instruction, Rutgers—New Brunswick
Rutgers—New Brunswick launched INFOSILEM Timetabler in fall 2019 to create the spring 2020 course schedule. And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With the massive changes caused by the pandemic, they haven’t been able to see the impact on student travel—yet. However, they were able to create academic blocks and course combinations so that departments are able to make sure that courses within their own department don’t conflict with each other or with courses that their students are taking in other departments. Hammond says the improvement to the schedule, gives departments the ability to intentionally influence how the overall schedule is created to improve student choice.
“Because of the pandemic, the schools and departments have developed a different level of appreciation for the ability to have a system that’s much more flexible.”
—Paul Hammond
Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology and Instruction, Rutgers-New Brunswick
Implementing the INFOSILEM Timetabler scheduling system right before the pandemic allowed Rutgers—New Brunswick to see the advantages of having a flexible system. Says Hammond, “We really feel fortunate that we finished the implementation on the semester that we did, because we’ve had to be extremely nimble. By coincidence we happened to finish right before the pandemic hit. It necessitated major changes, obviously. Our ability to do that flexibly and nimbly using the software was invaluable. We just couldn’t have done it without the new scheduling solution.”
Although Rutgers—New Brunswick wasn’t able to immediately see the benefits of the sophisticated dashboards they set up to track student travel during the pandemic, they’ve seen many non-travel-related results from the Infosilem scheduling system, including improved academic planning, higher-quality data, and right-sizing rooms based on enrollment.
With the new system, academic planning is now an ongoing process. Rutgers—New Brunswick can use the scheduling system to work with the individual departments in the schools to improve the way they’re planning from semester to semester.
As part of the implementation process, Rutgers—New Brunswick was able to “clean up” their data so that it now has a higher level of completeness and accuracy. Hammond says that the higher-quality data allows them to do things they couldn’t do two or three years ago. They’re confident that all the course information and prerequisites are complete and accurate, and visible to the departments.
With accurate data, Rutgers—New Brunswick is also able to see actual historic course enrollment. Now the administration and departments can better match room size with the number of students who take each course so they’re no longer putting courses that historically had fewer than 100 students in a room that holds 200, for example.
Other side benefits to enhanced course scheduling are also becoming apparent. For example, if early and late courses don’t need to be offered, buildings can open later and close earlier, potentially reducing energy consumption.
Although students don’t interact with the scheduling system directly, they benefit from it in many ways. With scheduling done to optimize the student experience, they can get the classes they need, bottlenecks disappear, and complaints go down. Says Hammond, “From the student perspective, it’s invisible. Projects like this are a success if they don’t notice it.”
By removing unnecessary scheduling hurdles, the scheduling system can reduce students’ time to degree and student debt. “For students who want to complete in four years, we want to make sure that there aren’t any barriers,” says Hammond. “A modern system that makes it possible for students to get the courses that they need in order to progress towards degree is critical.”
Rutgers—New Brunswick further customized the INFOSILEM Timetabler software to show departments where the students who take courses are actually living to enable the departments to change where they’re offering courses. The software allows department administration and school administration to look at academic planning at a higher level.
“The Infosilem scheduling system allows us to align the student’s scheduling needs with the department’s schedule, to help our students get the courses that they need when they need them in order to advance towards degree.”
—Paul Hammond
Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology and Instruction, Rutgers—New Brunswick
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