paper -
80 Managing Student Workers: How to Effectively Schedule and Supervise Student Workers in a Dynamic Environment
Michael
Ringham, Texas A&M University
In fall 1998, Computing and Information Services (CIS)
at Texas A & M University opened the Student Computing Center (SCC),
holding approximately 540 computers.
The SCC is open 24 hours a day during the week and is also open on the
weekend. The SCC employs approximately
60 student workers and 7 full-time employees.
There are 4 additional labs run by CIS, together known as Open-Access
Labs, giving a total of approximately 170 student workers. All Open-Access Labs
are available to all students of Texas A & M University.
In the past, each lab supervisor scheduled student
workers by hand. A spreadsheet was
later developed to help facilitate the supervisor in scheduling those
hours. It was imperative to find a new
method for scheduling student workers when the SCC opened. A web-based scheduling system with a
graphical user interface was created which allowed student workers to request
when they wanted to work, when they were willing to work, and when they were
unable to work. Additional tools were
created allowing students to view individual student worker schedules, view
daily schedules, and trade hours.
In addition to the ease of scheduling via the web,
day-to-day supervision has been simplified.
Benefits for the lab supervisors include immediate email notification of
schedule changes from trading of hours, an up-to-date daily schedule showing
where potential problems may occur, and when to expect students to arrive at
work.
This paper will describe the evolution of the web-based scheduling system from a simple method of gathering students' schedule information to a complex application for trading hours between labs. With student worker input this process of evolution has become a team effort.
Keywords: scheduling, supervising, student workers, web interface