Allocation

This page allows Heads of Subject to allocate work to members of academic staff.

Clicking the down-arrow in a column heading allows you to sort or filter the list.

Definitions

An allocation is a planning figure made against a member of academic staff. It corresponds to the number of students that person is expected to interact with in a particular role. For modules where the students work in groups, it is the number of groups the person is expected to interact with.

An assignment is where a member of academic staff has been paired with a particular student.

Page layout

Allocations are done in advance of the start of the academic year but also change within the academic year as necessary. It is therefore important to make sure you are working within the correct academic year. Choose the right one by using the drop-down list.

All currently-defined cohorts and their associated roles are shown at the top of the table. Note that the table may be scrolled in both directions. At the far right is a graphical representation of the balance of allocations and assignments for each member of staff. Light blue represents an unused allocation, dark blue represents the assignments for the person, and red indicates an under-allocation. That is where the total assignments exceed the allocations.

The three rows at the bottom of the table are provided for reference:

• Totals summarises the allocations already made for the cohort in question.
• Required is calculated on the basis of the estimated student numbers when this figure is available. Otherwise, it is the total number of students in the related cohort. If the number of registered students is larger than the estimate, the actual number is used.
• Difference is simply the number of assigned roles minus the required number.

Making changes

To increase of decrease the allocation value for a particular combination of staff member, cohort and role, use the up and down arrows that appear when you hover the cursor over the displayed value. In the example below, the arrows can be seen in the column for the Sponsor role for cohort SOC09109 2020/21 TR2.

The new value overwrites any previous value that was stored. Periodically, WAM allocations are transferred to the WAM system. To do this, an administrator creates a WAM snapshot. This records the allocations at the time the snapshot is created. The snapshots provide a history of WAM allocations.

The View icon zoom_in gives access to a detailed view of the allocations and assignments for a specific member of staff.