Office of Classroom Management

• Scheduling Team
• The team is busy with fall 2023 class changes! Final exam room requests are being processed as well. 
• Check out the Course Section & Student Modality Dashboard to see up-to-date class modality stats for fall semester. As of publication, on the Twin Cities campus for all careers, we are at 82.66% in-person class sections (that's 8,887 classes); 10.72% are remote or online (1152 classes); and 6.62% are blended (a little in-person and a little online/remote; 712 classes). 
• Spring 2024 class details are still being updated by departments, but we have about 75% of the classes already assigned. We expect that pace to pick up as we roll into late September. 
• CCS will open for department schedulers to start scheduling May/summer 2024 classes at the end of September, so the team is busy with data clean up to prep for summer scheduling. 
• Friendly reminder that you can reserve a general purpose classroom (GPC) for your meeting needs as well! We encourage you to use GPCs when they are not otherwise scheduled for classes. They make great meeting spots if you are on campus. You can log in to Astra directly to submit a room request and use Room Search to see room details.
• Service Team
• Fall semester prep by the numbers:
• 4 new students Classroom Technology Monitors hired this August.
• 130+ technology upgrades completed over the summer - Thanks CTS!
• Congratulations to Noah Holm who was promoted to Service Manager in August! Noah has been with OCM since 2017, and has been instrumental in improving the faculty and student experience in learning spaces. In his new role, he will build on his previous efforts by cultivating a team and creating connections across the University to improve services.
• To build out the team, we are looking to hire a Technology Service Lead (see open position below).
• Operations Team
• OCM has been focusing on right-sizing our classroom inventory capacity-wise. We replaced furniture in over 30 classrooms this summer, including Ford and Vincent Halls, where we decreased capacities for more square-footage per student in the rooms. 
• Other notable projects this summer include furniture and finish replacements in Ford Hall, new furniture in Vincent, and card reader replacements for classrooms in Burton, Murphy, Elliott, Keller, and Smith Halls.
• Classroom Technical Services
• CTS is positioned to support a great start to the fall semester. For the first two weeks of the semester, project work is put on reduced priority to ensure we have staffing capacity available to assist faculty and students who may have challenges working with the audio-video systems. 
• Summer project activity wrapped up last week. Over the past few months, CTS was able to complete approximately 30 large, 75 small, and a few additional miscellaneous projects on the TC Campus despite significant staffing shortages. Working with our partners in OCM, several project schedules were adjusted to balance workload with available resources. Thanks OCM!
• The organization is looking to hire a Senior Electronics Technician/AV Specialist (see open position below).
• In August, CTS began working with a new software support vendor, 3K Technologies, to assist us in managing our business software systems. We’re looking forward to working with our new vendor to bring improved performance and functionality to our systems.

Office of Classroom Management

• Classroom Technical Services (CTS) has officially kicked off the Summer Life Cycle 23 Installation Extravaganza! So far, CTS technicians have been able to set the pace at an extremely high bar. They’ve not only tackled the LES 140 suite and a Departmental install, but they also knocked out all of the projector upgrades in Bruininks and Kolthoff Halls (aside from the one room with the leak). Phase II installations of Bruininks 220 & 230 and Armory 116 & 202 are complete, and the upgrade of the first ever ALC at the U, Keller 2-260, is almost finished along with the Phase II of Tate 110. 
• The most exciting part of all of this is, unlike last year, we actually have all of the equipment we need to do the work. With that supply-chain obstacle finally in the rear-view mirror, we can kick it into high gear and have an install season for the record books.
• Summer classroom projects are underway. We are wrapping up “Furniture Frenzy” deliveries (over 1,500 pieces of furniture!), and now are working on all the details that happen after the furniture arrives. These include things like asset stickering, new room pictures, layout updates, room search updates, etc. We are coordinating card reader installs and updates, lighting updates, and will start going through our service spaces to continue clean-out work and reshuffling of attic stock efforts started last summer.
• On the Scheduling side, we are processing summer 2023 cancellations, finalizing fall 2023 room assignments, and getting ready to batch schedule spring 2024 classes. The final exam schedule for fall 2023 and spring 2024 will soon be published for students and instructors, and the CCS Class Schedule Build production calendar for summer 2024 - spring 2025 is now available for scheduler review. 
• In addition to the CTS organizational alignment referenced above, OCM has been working to further align the Scheduling, Operations, Customer Service and Planning units to better support cross functional work across teams. Work duties are being right-sized, and teams are being developed with an emphasis on collaboration. With these changes, there will be some reporting line changes that will be effective June 20.

Office of Classroom Management

Operations-Service and Planning Teams

• Spring has sprung? Time was spent during spring break to prep rooms ahead of a very active summer. This involves removing furniture with OCM ID stickers and making site visits. These visits will determine where instructor and ADA furniture changes will be made on proposed student furniture replacements in Vincent, Ford, Hanson and in select rooms in Folwell, Akerman, Rapson, and Murphy.

Classroom Technical Services

• Through the fall and winter, CTS had a busy schedule of departmental technology installations. A lot of the work has been focused around adding Zoom Room appliances to conference and classroom spaces. Some of our work even received press in The Minnesota Daily! 
• Additionally, CTS is nearing completion of the technology upgrades in the Regent’s Boardroom and West Committee room. These new installations will improve online meeting formats by utilizing the newer AV over IP distribution as a more streamlined solution.

Scheduling Team

• Spring 2023 final exams have been scheduled into classrooms, and requests continue to come in past the initial deadline. 
• Classroom assignments for summer 2023 are also underway. 
• In an effort to ensure operational efficiencies in buildings across campus, OCM consolidated the class schedule into a smaller number of buildings. 
• For fall 2023, CCS (Collaborative Class Scheduling) is closed and central classroom scheduling is happening. 
• After much data cleanup, the Astra room optimization process ran successfully. There are still approximately 700 classes that require manual scheduling. Many classes are meeting in prime times (Monday-Thursday, 9:05 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), which makes finding appropriate classrooms more challenging. The team is also working through UAT scripts for the newest version of Astra in the hopes of being able to upgrade in the near future.