Arranging Student Appointments with Scheduler activity

Owned by Michael Hughes
Last updated: Nov 16, 2023
4 min read

The Scheduler activity allows students to book appointment slots with staff.

Scheduler activity icon

Instructions

These instructions are for a very simple case of offering 30 minute slots to students every Monday and Thursday between 14:00 and 16:30, similar to an “office hours” approach.

  1. Once you click on the Scheduler icon from the Activity Chooser, a regular Moodle activity form will appear.

  2. Provide an appropriate Name for the type of appointment / slots you are using this scheduler to offer.

  3. In the Options section set the Default slot duration to 30 (minutes)

  1. Click on Save and Display

  2. Myplace will display the Scheduler activity’s My Appointments view.

    This view shows your appointments, including the slots you have made available, how many students have not made an apointment, and the option to schedule students into a slot.

Adding Slots

Slots are the spaces that you make available to students to book into.

  1. On the My Appointments view, click on the Add slots action.

  2. This will display a drop down menu offering you the choice between Add repeated slots and Add Single slot:

  3. Select the Add repeated slots option, as we want to create a number of them at once.

  4. The Add repeated slots form is displayed:

     

  5. In Date choose the 1st date that you want the slots to be created in.

  6. Unless you wish the slots to be created forever set a reasonable end date in Repeat time slots until.

  7. The Add appointments on settings allow you to choose the days of the week that the slots will be created in. Uncheck all of the days except for Monday and Thursday.

  8. Time range will control the hours in which the slots are created. This period will be divided into slots based on the Divide into slots setting, the Duration and Break between slots settings.
    For this set the Time Range for 14:00 to 16:30

  9. Maximum number of students per slot governs how may different students may book into the same slot. In this case ensure it is enabled and set 1, so each slot will only be with one student.

  10. Make sure the appropriate member of staff is selected in the Teacher option.

  11. Click Save Changes

  12. You will now find that the My Appointsments view is populated with all of the slots that a student can book into.

You may delete individual slots from this view, and students will not be able to select them.

You can use the cog icon for each slot to change that slots settings, as well as allocating or removing student(s) in the slot. This can also be used to provide information specific information or notes to each student in the slot.

The Booking a Scheduler activity slot page provides information for students on how to book slots that have been made available.

Once a student books a slot (or is allocated to one) their name and icon will be displayed in each slot’s Students column.

After an appointment

Once you’ve seen a student (or students) you should click on the student’s checkbox,to and mark if they attended or not. This just allows you to keep track of who you did or didn’t actually see.

You can also click on their name and see more detailed information, as well as any notes you wish to make available to them. Their attendance can also be marked on here.

At the moment marking a student’s attendance will not pass that information to systems that monitor attendance such as SEAMS.

Additional Settings

The other settings on the main activity settings page allow a number of different interactions.

Most of these have additional explanations that can be access by the icon that is displayed, but key ones are outlined below.

Options

Mode

This can control the number of slots a student can book into within a scheduler activity

Booking in groups

Setting to one of the Yes values will make all of the students in the same group join the same slot as the single student that booked in.

Guard time

You may wish to set aside some time between each slot for any post-appointment tasks, or to give some breathing space. Enable this setting and set to a time period, and this break will be used as the default separation when slots are being created.

Grade

You may choose to award a grade for students.

Booking form and student-supplied data

The Booking form is displayed prior to the student actually booking a slot and can be used to provide information or gather information from the student.

For more information on these settings see https://docs.moodle.org/401/en/Scheduler:_Booking_form

 

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