Timetab Instructions

The objective is to compose a curriculum consisting of 120 Credits for a full acadmic year, normally 60 Credits in each Semester. Students must consult their Directors of Studies on Course selection. Timetab can help by providing some workable ideas to take along to an interview.

Timetab is intended to be very simple to use. You can try out all of the buttons without fear of harm. The general procedure is as follows:

1. Load the data set that is appropriate to your needs! If you load all the data into an older computer over a slow connection it will take ages to load and will be slow in use. However, if you are a Director of Studies you are advised to load all data and keep the browser window open as long as you are using Timetab. Use a separate browser window for Wisard and/or other Web purposes.
2. Select either the College or the School or the Subject in which you are interested. If the list of Available Courses does not change automatically on your browser then click the appropriate Go button.
3. Select the Normal Year of Study (and click Go if necessary).
4. You may wish to select courses that only occur in Semester 1 or Semester 2 (60 Credits in each semester).
5. Some combinations of Selection critera may have no courses. For example, in Year 1 Biology has no Whole Year courses. They are all Semester courses
6. Select one or more Courses from the list of Available Courses and add to the list of selected courses.
7. There may be various warnings when a course is added to the selection:
   • Impossible combination: a Director of Studies will not allow a student to take a course combination which has clashing classes. An override button is provided for special circumstances. For example, a pair of related Engineering courses appear to be incompatible but are not because the lab classes alternate. Students should not override the Impossible Combination message.
   • Sequential classes on different sites: Some courses that are timetable compatible actually involve classes on sites too far apart to allow time to travel (typically the Central Area and Kings Buildings). Such courses should be avoided. Directors of Studies may allow the combination where transport arrangements are clearly workable.
   • Special Arrangements: Any message about special enrolment arrangements for individual courses.
8. Add other courses to complete your curriculum of 120 creadits
9. Enter your name in the Print Name window. This is important! In a public laboratory the printer may produce many printouts that appear superficially similar.
10. Click the Print button to open a new browser window containing the timetable. If you are satisfied - use the browser to print your timetable.
11. When you have finished with the Print window you can close it to return to the Course Selection window.

Other features

Colour scheme: The form layout is designed to fit, without scrolling, the smallest screen commonly in use (800 x 600). The colour scheme is intended to provide a little help with grouping: the green areas are associated with input (i.e. selection of Courses); the beige areas are associated with output.

Frequent: and Set: Directors of Studies see many students with similar curricula. The Set dialog allows any number of standard curricula to be saved for the current session - keep the selections in a standard text file to be copied and pasted into the dialog after startup. A standard curriculum may then be selected from the Frequent dialog.

Pre-enrolment: Directors of Studies may use the Pre-enrolment utility to prepare a list of their own Students and Courses suitable for pasting into the Set dialog. They can then use the Frequent dialog to select individual students.

Search: Sometimes it may not be obvious in which College or School lists a Course will be found. For example, Geography courses are listed under Science and Engineering although taken by many students from other Colleges. The Title search will search Course Titles for any given contiguous characters. Geography, geography and GEOGRAPHY are all equivalent. Parts of words work too: ography will find any courses with this ending. The search only works on the currently loaded data set. If you have loaded data for First and Second Year courses you will not find courses in other years. The Course Code search is for some users who happen to know Codes but not Titles.