Learning About Teaching Patterns (TTR)

Background

SFU's trimester system is unique in the higher education ecosystem, with only a rare few others in Canada like the University of Waterloo and Universite du Quebec, who also run on a trimester system. This means that faculty members (especially research faculty members) do not always have their research term aligned to the summer term. This can be very beneficial to faculty members if their research is time sensitive and cannot be done solely in the summertime. However, tracking a diverse format of patterns and variations of workload is then required in order to allow administrators to manage their teaching resources for program planning.

Purpose

The Faculty Workload/Teaching Patterns (TTR) in eTRACS assists Academic Administrators, staff and Faculty members in tracking instructor and faculty members teaching and research obligations to the University. It is also a place to capture any modifications to their workload and may include administrative assignments, leaves, course releases, and buyouts, so that administrators have the capability to determine resource capacity for planning and budgeting. Any special notes related to someone's 'pattern' may also be entered here to keep track of special arrangements with faculty members. It serves as a visual way to allow administrators and faculty members to quickly review, edit and add events through the lifecycle of a faculty member. By putting these workload modifications into a centralized system, faculties are not constrained by manual printouts and digging through files to discover a faculty member's history. It allows for greater sophistication in capacity planning in order to intersect with student and program demands. Over time, workload planning will enable SFU's demand based scheduling by providing the data necessary for understanding teaching resources and faculty capacity.

Importance of Developing a Rolling 2-Year Teaching Plan

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