HoD News - 6 February 2020

Dear colleagues,

New director of studies, oecon.
As I have previously informed, the current director of studies for oecon., Prof. Bo Sandemann Rasmussen, has agreed to become the section head of the new Economics section, starting 1 March 2020. I am very happy to announce that Prof. Michael Svarer will replace Bo and become the new director of studies. Michael will thus also become a member of the management team. Bo will continue as deputy head. I would like to thank both Bo and Michael for taking a great responsibility to lift these important administrative tasks at the department.

Scheduling of courses and exams, constraints, and curriculum-based teaching schedules
The planning of teaching schedules and exams is taking place twice a year and is repeatedly giving rise to challenges when actual schedules and the availability and limitation of auditoriums and lecture rooms confront with individual calendars, wishes, and restrictions. The teaching planning at Aarhus BSS has been based on a number of principles and limitations (“hard constraints”) that many colleagues often see as very restrictive with respect to individual needs. As a pilot experiment at ECON and MGMT, the upcoming planning for the fall semester 2020 will be based on a sequential procedure where an initial teaching schedule with “hard constraints” is made. Based on this initial schedule, the schedules will then be modified where possible in order to account for “soft constraints” that the lecturers may have. It is the department management who decides what are reasonable “soft constraints”. The hope is that such a sequential procedure overall will give rise to fewer restrictions, a more manageable practical implementation, and schedules that lecturers find more satisfactory. More information about the actual process and procedure for this pilot experiment will be announced later this spring.

Simultaneously, the university is working on a new system to manage course planning at the entire AU. The new system will be based on so-called curriculum-based course scheduling such that teaching schedules (individual courses and blocks of courses) with a regular cycle will be made in advance. The idea is that when the course schedules are known in advance, it is possible to better adjust and plan individual calendars accordingly. Also, it should become possible to reduce the planning resources compared to the individual planning that presently takes place from semester to semester.

Niels Haldrup