Glossary of terms

Allocation

Planning phase of deciding the subjects to be studied, teachers and rooms by each year group per timetable cycle.

AutoPlace

Advanced program function which automatically creates a timetable using:

• allocations
• blocks
• rotations
• unavailability
• virtual teachers and rooms.

Activity

Structure used to represent a subject, teacher and room combination for a particular year group.

Class code

Code used to define specialist subjects.

PE (Physical education).

Consecutives

To reduce specialist class setup time, certain specialist classes are scheduled to run one after the other.
AutoPlace uses defined consecutive specialist classes when scheduling year groups.

Art equipment is common to consecutive year groups:

• Art 1A
• Art 1B
• Art 1C.

Art equipment is changed for a second consecutive year group:

• Art 2A
• Art 2B
• Art 2C.

CSV file

File with comma-separated values, which can be created in Microsoft Excel. The file contains details which are easily transferred from one program and imported into another.

Teacher first name, surname and code, when importing teachers.

Cycle

Number of days in a timetable before repeating.

5-day, 10-day.

Double

Two consecutive periods of a subject, for a particular year group.

Art timetabled in doubles.

Home teacher

Teacher responsible for students in the home room.

Join

Two or more subjects from different year groups that run at the same time. An extension of joining is a Rotation, described below.

Note: Unavailability and Not Available can be used for sport, assemblies and choir.

Joins can be used to set up structures such as choir and sport.

Not available

Times (periods) not available for specialist subjects for particular year groups.

Year 6 sport, literacy and numeracy programs.

Quadruple

Four consecutive periods of a subject for a particular year group.

Room code

Code used to define specialist rooms.

LIB (Library).

Rotation

Timetabling technique which joins subjects (activities) from different year groups for two or more periods. This enables to rotate through different year groups.

Is an extension of a Join, described above.

Prep A, Prep B and Prep C classes are rotating through three periods on Monday afternoon: RE, PE and Music. This frees up the three prep home teachers to meet for lesson planning.

Schedule

Process of placing a subject for a particular year group on a particular time.

Specialist teacher

Teacher responsible for teaching a specialist subject.

Specialist room

Any room other than the home room.

Library.

Specialist subject

Any subject taught by a specialist teacher.

Art.

Teacher allotment

Total number of periods allotted to a teacher within the maximum available teaching load.

Teacher allotment is calculated as the number of periods allotted to a teacher per day multiplied by the number of days per timetable cycle.

Teacher allotments will always be less than the maximum available teaching load.

Year 1A will have two periods of Art on Monday during periods 3 and 4.

Teacher code

Code used to define specialist and home teachers.

TNS (Susan Thomas).

Teacher load

Total number of periods or hours of face-to-face class time assigned to a teacher per timetable cycle (usually a week).

Often this is regulated by an enterprise agreement.

Maximum available teaching load is calculated as number of periods per day multiplied by the number of days per timetable cycle.

6 periods/day x 5 days/cycle = 30 periods per cycle is the maximum available teaching load, subject to the enterprise agreement.

Triple

Three consecutive periods of a subject for a particular year group.

Unavailability

Times (periods) that teachers or rooms are not available for scheduling.

All specialist teachers and rooms can be made unavailable during the first period on Monday morning to prevent classes being scheduled then; so that an all-school assembly can be held.

Year group

A particular group of students who are together for most of their subjects.

Typically, a class within a grade but could be a grade or form.

Prep, 6A, Year 5/6.

Virtual room

Room that does not physically exist can be used to control when a subject is scheduled.

Virtual rooms can be created using the Structure/Rooms menu.

The virtual room can be assigned to a particular year group and subject (activity).

Note: No examples are provided in the videos or procedures in this manual.

All year one groups need to have art on Monday or Tuesday.
A virtual art room (VART) could be made unavailable on Wed, Thu and Fri.

Virtual teacher

Teacher that does not physically exist can be used to control when a subject is scheduled. Virtual rooms can be created using the Structure/Teacher menu. See Virtual room, described above.