Dear colleagues,

Over the past few months the School has been refining and improving the way in which the main Lecture Timetable is produced and published as part of a School-wide initiative to improve the overall student experience at SOAS.  A Project Board has been overseeing the redevelopment and refinement of the School’s Timetabling processes, led by Dr Mandy Bentham.  The objectives of this project was to deliver a streamlined teaching timetable process which minimised changes and enabled students and staff to access their final timetables from May each year.

The Project Board is pleased to announce that the final version of the Teaching Timetable for 2014-15 is now available from the timetable website:http://www.soas.ac.uk/timetable/current/. Please note that this timetable includes only lectures or whole-group seminars, i.e. activities which all students taking a course unit attend. It does not include tutorial group, these will be added in the summer. Final room allocations will be released in September.

Making changes to your timetable 

One of the key changes for this year has been the identification of named contact(s) within each Department.  The contact(s) have been discussing timetable requirements directly with Alex Dawson (Timetabling Officer) for 2014/15 which has helped to reduce the number of steps (and people) involved in the recording of timetable requests.  The School has also revised its Timetable Policy.  The Policy had not been reviewed since 2003. Revisions to the Policy were approved by LTQC on 4 June following discussion at Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee and Faculty Management Groups. 

http://www.soas.ac.uk/timetable/policies/policy/

Please email your departmental contact with any late change requests; always quoting the appropriate COURSE CODE.

Changes will only be accepted if they are in keeping with the criteria set out in the Timetable Policy.

All change requests must reach us by Friday 27th June 2014.

I'm sure you'll agree that the earlier publication of the lecture timetable is a welcome improvement to the SOAS Timetabling process and should ensure staff and students are able to plan their time in advance of the 2014/15 academic session.