S.99-64

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SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC ?

MEMORANDUM

To: ?

Senate

From:

?

J. M. Munro, Chair

Senate Committee on Academic Planning

Subject:

?

Course space restrictions

Date: ?

October 12, 1999

For Information

Acting under delegated authority of Senate, the Senate Committee on

Undergraduate Studies, the Senate Committee on Enrolment Management and

16

?

Undergraduate

and the Senate Committee on Academic Planning approved the

following motion:

"That academic departments offering courses where student demand exceeds

course limits be allowed to restrict course availability in the initial registration

round by total upper division hours in the department and/or semester upper

division hours in the department with the following provisos:

a.

That students be notified as far as possible in advance of use of the course

restriction mechanism through the Course Timetable and Exam Schedule sent to

all students prior to the start of telephone registration

b.

That SCEMP be notified by Departments as far as possible in advance of use

of the course restriction mechanism.

c.

That Departments report to SCEMP after each semester in which the course

restriction mechanism is used."

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SCUS 99 - 22

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R.9laUu%iofl CcnDulI

CA.SFU.FAS.UCC/Papers: 1991-9

"

Sharing Course Spaces: Additional Registration

Controls

Robert D. Cameron, Associate Dean, Faculty of Applied Sciences

?

August 31

2

1999

Introduction

In order to give flexibility to departments in which course

d

eman

d exceeds supply, new forms of registration

restriction are

proposed.

Current Registration Priority Rules

Senate paper

S

.85-59

introduced the four motions

that

were passed by Senate on December

2,1985

to

establish

the current basis for

registration priority at SU.

Motion 1

?

-*

That Senate delegate to the Senate

Committee on Undergraduate Studies the responsibility to approve

and review practices and procedures incorporating motions 2 through

5

which follow into the

University's registration system.

Motion 2

J ?

That Faculties offering courses where student

ciimd

exceeds course enrolment

limits

be allowed to

reserve a specified number of course pisces for particular groups of

stntiitc, such as majors, coop

students, etc.

Motion 3 [Failed]

____

That

Faculties offering courses where student demand exceeds course enrolment

limits

be allowed to

specify GPA

minima

for entry

into the course.

Motion

That

priority access to a reserved course place as set out in Motion 2 be determined on

the basis of

a.

semester hours completed, and to a lesser degree

b.

level of performance in recent

semesters-

Motion

5

That in the case of WD

withdrawals from courses where

student demand exceeds course enrolment

limits, students lose priority in that course

for the

next semester.

In essence, these

rules

establish a registration framework in which departments may divide

the

spaces,for each

course into a number of registration slots,

each

slot is designated for students in particular programs, and

students in each program have

access to the spaces in

a slot depending on credits completed and GPA as

combined to give

their

registration priority umber (RPN).

The Problem: Sharing

Within

Programs

Although the current system works well overall, it is not sufficiently fine-grained to deal with excess demand

by students within a single program. A particularly acute case at present is the demand placed on upper

division CMPT courses by CMPT majors. All CWT majors are in the same registration "slot" for each

'course and hence have their relative priority for registration determined by RPN. This means that the most

./ senior students have relatively unrestricted access and are free to take more upper division CMFI' courses than

they need. Many are indeed taking advantage of this flexibility in taking up to 48 upper division CMFF credits,

although 30 i;

- 16

are sufficient for the major. Unfortunately, with growing demand and decreased course

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Aiglitrition Controls

ta

ly in 1999-3,i has

ring third year without any upper division CMPT courses at

essence,theystemas

does not provide the flexibility to equitably allocate course

between students within a single program.

The Proposal: New Options for Registration Restrictions

In order to provide for sharing of course spaces within a program, it is proposed that two new options be

created for encoding the registration restrictions associated with course slots. Note that these restrictions are

only intended to be used early in the registration period, until

the time at which every student

has been given a

chance to register for the courses they need. Subsequently, all restrictions should be lifted to allow free access

to the remaining course spaces.

Restriction by total upper division hours in department.

A department may reserve course slots for those students whose total upper division hours in that

department is less than at particular limit For example,

the

School of Computing Science may reserve

course slots for for those CMPT majors who have fewer than 36 credit hours of upper division QvIPT

courses.

Similaily,

Computing may also restrict MSSC majors to 12 credit hours of upper division

C?IPil'T credit.. The total should be calculated dynamically as students register for courses. For

example, if a CMYI' student with 33 upper division credit hours registers for CMPT 410-3, this would

bring the credit total to 36, precluding further registration in upper division CMPT courses.

Restriction by semester upper division

hours

in department

A department may restrict the total number of upper division credits in the department that are available

to a student in the initial round of registration- For example, Computing Science may restrict CMFI

Majors to at most 9 upper division CMPT credits

in a semester, until such time

as everyone has

had a

chance to register.

Motion: That academic departments offering courses where student demand exceeds course enrolment limits

?

allowed to restrict course availability in the ini

th

i

l

registration round by total upper division hours in the

department

and/or semester upper division hours in the department

These responsibilities now fall within the terms of reference of the

Senate Committee on Enrolment Management and Planning (SCEMP)