How do I schedule student appointments using the Scheduler in Moodle?

As part of our integration with Banner, we have created a “Faculty Advisor” course for all faculty members listed in Banner, and we have added all current advisees to those courses.  You can use the Quickmail block in that Faculty Advisor course to send an email message to all your advisees, and you can use the Scheduler to allow your advisees to schedule an appointment with you.  In this “Quick Start Guide,” we will focus on how to set up those appointment slots for students to use in order to sign up for advising appointments.  Please note that these instructions would work for student appointments in any of your Moodle courses. We are using the "Faculty Advisor" course just as an example.

1. Go to our Moodle server at https://moodle.bucknell.edu.
2. Look for your “Faculty Advisor: : YourLastName, YourFirstName” course under “Advising” in the Current Course List module on the right-hand side of the screen, and click on the link for that course.  (For other courses, just click on the appropriate course link.)
3. If the Edit Mode is “off,” click on the “Turn editing on” button at the top-right of the screen:

   

4. Move your mouse to the bottom-right corner of the topic area where you want to add the appointment scheduler, and click on the link for “Add an activity or resource”:

   

5. The Scheduler is one of the Activities you can add to a course. Scroll down in the grid of activities (ordered alphabetically) until you find “Scheduler,” and click on the icon for Scheduler to begin the process of adding it to your course :

   

    

6. In the General section at the top, add a name for the Scheduler, such as “Advisee Appointments”:

   

7. 
    
8. Among the Scheduler options, you’ll want to check (and modify, if needed) the “Default slot duration” - in other words, the default length of an individual student conference – which is initially set to 15 minutes:

   

9. You (and your students) may also want to receive an email message when they apply for an appointment slot, so you may want to scroll down to find the “Notifications” option, and change “No” to “Yes”:

   

10. Scroll down on the page, and click on the "Save and display" button to move to the next stage of the Scheduler creation:
11. If you clicked on the “Save and return to course” button, Moodle will return you to the main page for your course. Click on the link for the scheduler that you just created. If you clicked on “Save and display,” you’ll be at a page that will allow you to add particular time slots to the Scheduler. To add multiple time slots all at once, click on “Add slots” and then “Add repeated slots”:

    

12. On the Add slots page, you will need to set up the available appointment times. You may want to change the following settings on that page:
    • Date:  This is the starting date for the appointments.  In the image below, we are assuming that the appointments will begin on Monday, October 26.
    • Repeat time slots until: This is the end date for those appointments.  We are assuming (for this example) that appointments will end on Friday, October 30. 
    • Add appointments on:  Choose the days of the week when you want appointments.  By default, all weekdays are selected, so you’ll need to de-select the days that you don’t want.
    • Time range:  For the Time range setting, you need to choose the start time and the end time for the block of appointment times.  Moodle uses “military time,” so in our example below, we are assuming that appointments will begin at 1 PM (choosing 13:00 as the Start time) and will end at 4:00 PM (choosing 16:00 as the End time).
    • Duration:  This gives you another opportunity to specify how long each appointment should last. 
    • Location:  If you specify your office location, it will appear on the Scheduler when students sign up for slots.
    • Email a reminder:  If you’d like, you can set a date when students will be reminded of their appointment.  In the image below, we asked Moodle to send a reminder to the student one day before the actual appointment.
13. Below are screen captures of the settings you most likely need to change:
    1. Add beginning and ending dates for the appointments:

       

    2. Deselect the weekdays when you do not want appointments:

       

    3. Choose the start and end times for those appointments:

       

    4. Make sure that the duration of each appointment is what you want. By default, the duration is 15 minutes per appointment:

       

    5. Enter your office location (if desired):

       

    6. You can choose to have Moodle send email to your advisees to remind them of the appointment slot that they chose:

       

14. After you have made all of the settings changes that you need, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the " Save changes" button. Moodle will confirm the number of slots you have added and will display a list of the available appointments. Your students will be able to click in a “Book slot” button to select a particular appointment, and when you click on the link for the Scheduler you created, you’ll be able to see which slots students have selected.