scheduling
(also see the conference room pages https://www.bioadmin.ucla.edu/conference-rooms/)
Classroom Assignments/Changes
Contact Donald Essex in Hershey Hall 133 (dessex@lifesci.ucla.edu, 310-825-1268) concerning classroom scheduling/changes or when needing additional rooms for extra class sessions, review sessions, and exams. Scheduling is typically completed several months in advance of each quarter. If you have preferences for particular classrooms or schedules, please inform Donald by the following dates: Fall Quarter – February 1st, Winter Quarter – July 1st, and Spring Quarter – November 1st.
Course Scheduling, Enrollments & Rosters
Course assignments are made annually by the Chair of each department. See Donald Essex in Hershey Hall 133 (dessex@lifesci.ucla.edu, 310-825-1268) for rooms and times. Rosters are available online through Electronic Gradebook. The quarterly Schedule of Classes is online at http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/.
Course Websites
For information on instructional websites, contact Kristin Hartman at webteam@lsic.ucla.edu,
Dropping Courses
Students may drop courses through MyUCLA up until the end of the fourth week of the quarter. After that, they may drop courses with the instructor’s signature until the end of the tenth week of the quarter. A few classes are impacted, which means that students cannot drop them after the end of the second week of the quarter without extraordinary cause, and they must seek approval from both the instructor and the College. As of June 2013, these courses from LSSA departments are impacted: Ecol & Evol Biol 110, MCDB 104 and 138, Phy Sci 107 and 166, and Life Sciences 2, 3, 10H, 100HA, 100HB, and 100HC. Please consult your departmental student affairs officers if you have questions on campus drop/add policies.
Electronic Gradebook
See MyUCLA GRADEBOOK.
Enrollment
Students enroll in courses online through MyUCLA, beginning several weeks before the next quarter. Enrollment appointments, which are determined by students’ class standings, begin in late June for Fall classes, mid-November for Winter classes, and late February for Spring classes. Summer Sessions enrollment begins in early February. Generally enrollments and enrollment problems are handled by the departmental student affairs officers until the quarter actually begins. Course prerequisites are strictly enforced by MyUCLA and departmental student affairs officers, although instructors may choose to overlook prerequisites in individual cases. Check with your departmental SAO (graduate or undergraduate, according to the class) to confirm the policies for enrollment for particular courses.
Evaluations (Teaching)
See www.oid.ucla.edu/eip/INDEX.HTM. All undergraduate courses must be evaluated. The evaluations will be available to you online after you submit your grades (for Ecol & Evol Biol, MCDB and Phy Sci courses) or distributed in hard copy form by the Life Sciences office (for Life Sciences core courses). For paper evaluations, please follow the instructions on the envelope and have the evaluations returned by a student in the sealed envelope to the Life Sciences Core office, Hershey Hall 222.
General Catalog
The General Catalog is available online at www.registrar.ucla.edu/catalog/. The Catalog is available online only; there is no print edition. The Catalog PDF and website are published annually in late June or early July for the upcoming academic year. The Catalog is not updated after publication. Prerequisites and other course information can change as often as each quarter. If you would like to change the catalog listing for your course, consult the student affairs officers for your department.
Grades
Grades should be submitted via Electronic (MyUCLA) Gradebook. Students should check MyUCLA for their grades. Grades cannot be given out to students by e-mail or over the phone. See MyUCLA GRADEBOOK.
Grade Changes
To change a grade after grades have been submitted, obtain a Change of Grade form from your departmental Student Affairs Office. The form should be filled out, signed and returned to that office for forwarding to the Registrar. Students may not pick up or return Change of Grade forms under any circumstances.
Instructional Improvement Grants
The campus receives Instructional Improvement funds, which the Office of Instructional Development (OID) has elected to convert into a grant program for faculty. The Chancellors Committee on Instructional Improvement Programs (CCIIP) is appointed to provide direction in the administration of these grants, which are intended for the improvement of undergraduate courses, curricula and teaching. Grants are designed for curricular innovation and pedagogical experiment and cannot be substituted for the ongoing or normal costs of course delivery. They may not be applied to graduate courses or independent studies courses such as SRP, 198 or 199. Instructional Improvement Grants are competitive and in high demand. More information can be found on the OID website at: http://www.oid.ucla.edu/grants/iip or by contacting Dr. Kumiko Haas at (310) 206-1440 or via email at iip@oid.ucla.edu.
Instructional Media Collections and Services
IMCS primarily serves faculty and departmental personnel who use media in the classroom. IMCS has a collection of approximately 8,000 videotapes, laserdiscs, DVDs, CD-ROMs, films and slide/tape modules and houses and maintains several department and study center collections. For additional information, visit http://www.oid.ucla.edu/units/imcs
Mini-Grants
Mini-grants of up to 0 for faculty per academic year are provided for small-scale projects which improve or enrich existing undergraduate courses. Read more about the program at http://www.oid.ucla.edu/grants/minigrants.
MyUCLA
Students enroll in courses for the academic year and summer session through MyUCLA.
MyUCLA Gradebook
Faculty are able to access their gradebooks from MyUCLA using a Bruin Online (BOL) ID and password. BOL accounts can be established online atwww.bol.ucla.edu. Faculty needing assistance with their BOL accounts can contact the BOL help desk at 310-825-7452 or via email atwebmail@ucla.edu. Departments have also designated CSC or network coordinators who can call the BOL help desk on behalf of faculty and reset forgotten passwords. For more information on Gradebook, see the manual at http://cis.ucla.edu/pdf/print.pdf, or the Quick Start guide athttp://cis.ucla.edu/pdf/quickstart.pdf. Your departmental student affairs officers can also help you with Gradebook issues. The Electronic Gradebook can be used by faculty to record grades throughout the academic quarter, inform students of test scores, distribute comments, assign projects and transmit final grades to the campus registrar — all from a secure, easy-to-use Web site. Fully customizable by each instructor, the Electronic Gradebook can be adapted to suit individual class management needs. Faculty can use the Electronic Gradebook to create a gradebook that offers variable weighting for different kinds of academic performance — final examinations, midterm tests, papers, class participation, special projects or any other performance indicators chosen by the instructor; automatically schedule projects for students; inform students of their academic progress during the quarter; use calculation features that automatically recommend a grade; modify and update individual grades throughout the academic quarter; submit final grades to the registrar; automatically alert students to deadlines, testing schedules and other class milestones; communicate with individual students about their grades, or discuss study material with an entire class.
Office Of Instructional Development
The Office of Instructional Development offers a variety of programs, services, emerging technologies and multimedia labs to enhance teaching and learning. OID provides individualized consultation to faculty on all aspects of teaching and learning (e.g., organizing a lecture, facilitating a discussion, designing course curricula). It provides grant funding to instructors and departments to support major projects designed to enhance curricular experimentation and development and to improve undergraduate instruction; has staff to help instructors learn and use technology and multimedia in the classroom; houses a collection of instructional video and audio tapes that can be reserved for use in the classroom or the media lab. OID also is responsible for installed and portable media equipment in all general assignment classrooms, and can videotape your lecture or special event and provide professional editing and webcasting of the taping. OID distributes and processes course and instructor evaluations and provides scannable test scoring services (a.k.a. Scantron) to the campus, and organizes training for teaching assistants as well as oral proficiency testing for international TAs. (You must notify the OID office in advance if you plan to use their Scantron services – see SCANTRONS below.) For further information, go to www.oid.ucla.edu or call 310-825-9149.
Pass/No Pass
Students can change the grading basis of any course from pass/no pass to a letter grade, or the reverse, up until the end of the sixth week of the quarter UNLESS the course is listed in the catalog as letter grade only or pass/no pass only. Check the catalog updates at http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/catsel.asp to see what is listed for your course.
Permission To Enroll Numbers (PTEs)
If an undergraduate class is closed (full) and the instructor wishes to let in additional students, or if the student is not eligible to take a course because of a restriction in an upper division course, or if the instructors wish to move a student from the wait list into the class, the student should be given the student a Permission to Enroll number for the appropriate section of the course. PTE numbers are available via MyUCLA Gradebook. See the student affairs officers of your course’s department (see below) to confirm the department’s policy on PTE numbers.
Privacy Law (FERPA)
Because of federal privacy laws, information on UCLA students (regardless of their age) cannot be given out to anyone except that student. This includes student ID numbers, schedules, grades, or any other information. If you have questions on privacy restrictions, please consult your departmental student affairs officers. In addition, lists of grades, etc., may not be posted by student number or name, nor may assignments, papers, exams, etc., be left in a box for students to pick up.
Readers
Reader budgets may be given to classes with enrollments over 30 in courses without TA’s. Budgets are given based on the official enrollments as of the third week of each quarter. Contact Elissa Lappenga at elappenga@lifesci.ucla.edu for more information. Readers must sign the proper Payroll forms in LSSA’s payroll office, Hershey Hall 230.
Scantrons (Test Scoring Services)
The Evaluation of Instruction Program (part of the Office of Instructional Development) provides a variety of test scoring services that are available to all UCLA instructors. The overall goal of the test scoring service is to provide an efficient and accurate means of grading multiple-choice exams that will effectively generate reports to suit the instructor’s needs. Such reports should be used by instructors to improve the testing process itself. EIP scores multiple choice exams using ONLY the UCLA Evaluation of Instruction Program – General Purpose Answer Sheet. This form is provided by EIP. To ensure efficient service, ALL examinations must be scheduled at least 48 hours in advance. To schedule scoring for an examination, please call the EIP office at 310-825-6939 with the following information: subject, instructor/contact person with extension, approximate number of examinations, and time and date they will be delivered. All answer keys and answer sheets must be completed in number 2 pencil ONLY. There is normally a 15 minute turnaround on examination scoring, although contingencies such as workload and equipment malfunction may affect the time needed for processing. Please be prepared to wait for exams to be processed. ALL examinations must be delivered to EIP in their own envelope/folder with their respective keys and the completed Test Scoring Request (PDF) form. For more information, see www.oid.ucla.edu/units/eip/testscoring/.
Schedule Of Classes
See www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/.
Scheduling Classes, Review Sessions, Etc.
Courses in Ecol & Evol Biol, MCDB, and Phy Sci are scheduled by Donald Essex in Hershey Hall 133 (dessex@lifesci.ucla.edu, (310-825-1268). Courses in the Life Sciences Core series are scheduled by Tracy Knox in Hershey Hall 222B (tracyn@lifesci.ucla.edu).
Summer Sessions
Summer sessions courses are scheduled by student affairs officers in each department (Jocelyn Yamadera in Ecol & Evol Biol, Connie Firestone in MCDB, Michael Carr in IBP, and Tracy Knox in the LS Core).
Teaching Assistants
Teaching assistants are assigned by the chairs of each department to courses based on enrollment, according to the annual budget granted to them by the Dean of Life Sciences. The traditional load for teaching assistants is three sections of 20-25 students each, but this may vary according to the responsibilities they have in the course. See your department’s graduate student affairs officer if you have questions about the number of TAs assigned to your course.
Textbook and Desk Copy Orders
Contact Donald Essex in Hershey Hall 133 (dessex@lifesci.ucla.edu, (310)825-1268). For Life Sciences core courses, see Tracy Knox in Hershey Hall 222B (tracyn@lifesci.ucla.edu). Ordering class textbooks is done approximately eight weeks before the beginning of the quarter through an online textbook requisition to the UCLA Store.