Office of the Registrar

Guidance on Scheduling of Formal Discussion Sections

To fulfill the dual goal of allowing transparency for student schedule planning as well as effective classroom management and allocation, all in-person discussion sections and related course components that will meet on a regular basis throughout the semester should be built through the Course Offering Builder and linked to the primary meeting by the C@B publishing date so that students can plan accordingly.

  • Ad hoc discussion sections/related course meetings in University centralized spaces will no longer be allowed. Mandatory related course components should be built no later than one week in advance of pre-registration for a particular semester.
  • All related meetings must have days and times specified and be linked to the primary meeting.
  • Related meetings during the standard daytime slots must be scheduled in and make use of the full meeting period.
  1. If a department wishes to, they can share a standard daytime slot across courses. As an example, Department Course X could use Mondays from 2-2:50 p.m. and Course Y could use the same room on Wednesday and Friday at 2-2:50 p.m. This allows the classroom to be fully utilized and does not result in an orphaned room for the remainder of the meeting pattern(s).
  • ‘Arranged’ will no longer be approved unless it is an online offering. A classroom will NOT be provided after approval.
  • Avoid seminar blocks. These are when most small rooms are heavily utilized, and scheduling related meetings during seminar times would allow students less access to other courses in those times.
  • In-Person enrollments will be capped at the capacity limit of the rooms they are placed in, so please make sure that you have built enough related meetings to accommodate the expected total number of students in the lecture.
  • If you wish to offer non-standard or non-conforming slots, consider evenings after seminar blocks; make use of the open Tuesday Thursday 12-12:50 p.m. slot; and/or utilize online sections. Otherwise, if you have departmental classroom space or meeting rooms that have not been centralized you can feel free to schedule those as you wish. 

For departments/courses that cannot follow the above guidelines and/or want to request ‘breakout’ rooms at the same meeting time in addition to the classroom assigned to their lecture, the only option is that after the second week of classes they may request “TA Sessions” in 25Live like any other event requesting space. However, those departments who choose to go this route do so with the clear understanding that they neither have any guarantees of securing a space nor will they have priority over other Brown events in 25Live and therefore are subject strictly to space as it is available. That may mean that locations for recurring dates and times may be sporadic if space is even available.