As a professor, or even a Teaching Assistant, you probably had to set up meeting schedules at some point. You might have used Excel, for example, to cross out times that your students can not attend an extra session, and the "uncrossed" entries would be options for your meeting time.
You might have even wanted to schedule advising appointments before the end of the semester to help them decide their courses, but with their emails everything was all over the place!
Well Doodle.com is a free online answer to these scheduling issues, that keeps track of your scheduling online, and allows students/participants in meeting, etc, to choose their best available meeting times from among different choices that you set, in order to help you find a time [or even a place!] that is suitable for all!
To start off with your schedule, please visit Doodle.com.
You might have even wanted to schedule advising appointments before the end of the semester to help them decide their courses, but with their emails everything was all over the place!
Well Doodle.com is a free online answer to these scheduling issues, that keeps track of your scheduling online, and allows students/participants in meeting, etc, to choose their best available meeting times from among different choices that you set, in order to help you find a time [or even a place!] that is suitable for all!
To start off with your schedule, please visit Doodle.com.
Next choose "Schedule event":
On the next screen [shown below], you will be able to enter a title to your event (ex. FREN-232 Extra Weekly Session), your name, and optionally entering your email address to receive notifications when someone fills in their information. It is not necessary to fill in your email address as you can still check the results of the "poll" by accessing the link to it, which I will show you later. Once you are done click next.
Now you will see a calendar. You can use the navigation buttons next to the month to change months, and you can choose the dates you would like to use from the dates available under the month. This is useful for both a one time meeting AND a weekly meeting. For a weekly meeting, just choose the possible days of the week (ex. Monday-Friday) regardless of the dates associated with them, and treat them as just "days of the week".
For now, I will choose the dates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday:
Note that the dates I choose (20, 22, and 24) were highlighted in green in the calendar view. They were also listed on the right under "selected dates". If you chose a date by mistake, you can then click on the red "X" next to it on the right to delete it.
Once you are done, click next.
You will then be taken to a screen where you can input the time slots you need. By default, there will be 5 options available for each day, however you can always click on "add further time slots" to add some.
Fill in the time slots you would like (or even room numbers, etc). I will only use two slots for each day in this example:
I highlighted the "Add further time slots" button in red in case you need it. Note that for Friday, I used 24 hour time format to enter my options. Thats also a possibility. Note that if you only enter a date without AM/PM next to it, it will be considered as an input in 24-hour format.
You can also put in intervals instead of just one time, like "8:15am-9:45am".
Once you are done with your inputs, click next.
On the next screen you will get the option if you getting the link for the poll and manually sending it to participants, or you can have Doodle send the invitation. Since I usually prefer to send the invitations using my own email client where I have all my contacts set up, I will choose the first option.
If you would like to make this a one time scheduling event for one on one meetings (ex. advising meetings) here is what you can do: Click on "Options", and on the following screen check the box that says "Limit the number of participants per suggestions to:" and keep the number one in the next box. Of course you can change that number if need be.
For the purpose of this poll I will continue with that option unchecked.
Once you're done, click Finish:
You will get two links, the participation link, and the administration link. I boxed both in red.
Send the participation link to your students/colleagues, and save the administration link for your future use. Participants will be able to choose from the different options you gave them, and you will be able to do any future edits from the administration link.
My colleague Nick decided to participate in my event, and so this is the screen he arrived at when he clicked on the participation link:
Note that he clicked on the time slots in which he is available, and that he entered his name on the left. once he was done, he clicked "Save". Andy did the same thing, and here is the result you will see when you go to the participation link:
You can see from this screen that from the options they both chose, there is only one that works with us all, and that is the one that has a green "OK" for all participants, i.e. Mondays at 10:00 PM, and this will be our weekly meeting time! You can always return to this screen by clicking on "Access this poll with administrator rights" after you visit the "administration page" link
Now everything is set and you are ready to decide on an appointment/schedule!
