Faculty Documentation: Best Practices for Sign-Up Tool
Overview
The sign-Up tool is a way for instructors to be transparent with the students about times that they are available to meet throughout the semester. It is a much better alternative to the sign-up sheet on the door and convenient for the students too!
Recommendations for Creating Meetings
TIP #1: You can make the Sign-Up available to certain groups within a site which can make it easier if you only want a few people setting up meetings with you at a time.
TIP #2: We recommend turning on Notifications of participant actions, so you will receive an email when a student signs up or cancels an appointment.
TIP #3: Use Announce Availability to send an email notification to all potential participants.
TIP #4: Do not use the option Assign Participants & Publish unless you want to manually enter students for each time slot you have available.
Creating a Sign-Up
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First, go to the Sign-Up tool in your course site.
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Click
on the top of the page.
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You will then be prompted to enter a Title, Location, and Description of the meeting.
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Next, you will want to fill out the Start Time, End Time, and Meeting Frequency.
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Decide who you want to make this Sign-Up Available To, and then decide the Meeting Type.
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When you are satisfied with the settings, click Next.
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You will be shown a Meeting Summary which you should review to make sure that all the settings are correct.
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When you are finished reviewing the settings, click Publish or Assign Participants & Publish.
Types of Sign-Up Meetings
1. Open Meetings
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No sign-up is necessary.
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It is a way to tell students that an event is occurring during a specific time period and that they are all invited.
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Alternative to using calendar, but can also be used in conjunction with calendar.
2. Single Slot
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Can configure the attendance list to allow unlimited participants or only allow a limited amount of students to sign-up.
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Students must sign-up in order to appear on the attendance list
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This is a good option if you want to have a running list of how many students plan on attending the event.
3. Multiple Slots
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This is the best option if you are meeting with students one-on-one or in small groups to discuss group assignments.
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If you set up a three-hour meeting, you can divide up the three hours into six half-hour slots or twelve quarter-hour slots.
Instructor View
TIP #5: If you believe that too many people have signed-up for a specific time period, you can click on a time slot and select Lock, which will prevent any more students from signing-up for that given time.
Other Default Settings
RECOMMENDATION: We encourage you to use these settings. For Max # of time slots, it would be beneficial for students to be allowed to sign-up for at least two times if you think they need to have some options and there is only one available slot per time allowed.
Student View