Managing Reserve Caps in CourseLeaf CLSS
- Marc Hatfield
- Lina Anastasio
Overview
Purpose: This article describes how schedulers can use CLSS to manage reserve caps on their sections, how to interpret the Reserve Cap interface in CLSS, and how to manage the list of reserve caps available to select for their department.
Background
Reserve caps allow departments to reserve a certain number of seats in their sections for particular populations of students. For example, a department may elect to set aside some of their seats for students in a particular major, students on a particular campus, or a number of other criteria.
Important Things to Know about Reserve Caps
Reserve caps do NOT override a course’s catalog prerequisites; they only add additional enrollment requirements.
The sum of all reserve caps may not exceed the enrollment capacity of the section.
Reserve caps can only be added to the enrollment section of a course; if a class has multiple components (e.g. lecture/lab or lecture/discussion), add the reserve cap to the section into which the student enrolls.
Sections should not have both reserve caps and require instructor or department consent.
Instructions
Managing Reserve Caps in CLSS
Navigating the Reserve Caps Interface
The Reserve Caps interface in CLSS can be found directly above the enrollment fields in the Section Editor. When a class does not have reserve caps, this interface will read “Reserve Caps: No” with a pencil icon to edit reserve caps:
When a class does have reserve caps, this label will read “Reserve Caps: Yes.” The enrollment cap and wait list fields will also be grayed out as these fields are managed in the Reserve Caps interface:
When you select the pencil icon next to the Reserve Cap label, a new window will open allowing you to edit reserve caps:
The following fields are visible on the Reserve Caps tab:
The enrollment cap and wait list for the entire section.
The description of the reserve cap(s) applied to the course.
The number of seats reserved for that reserve cap.
A green plus icon to add additional reserve caps if needed.
Sections with reserve caps may NOT use wait lists as the combination of these two elements leads to serious enrollment errors and confusion among students.
The Current Enrollments tab includes information about the number of reserved seats, the number of unreserved seats, and the number of seats remaining in each of those categories:
Adding Reserve Caps
When you select the green plus icon to add a new reserve cap, the dropdown menu will be populated with reserve caps used by your scheduling unit:
This list should include all the reserve caps your department has used within the past several years but, if you need access to a reserve cap not on the list, please contact registrarscheduling@uconn.edu to request that the reserve cap be added.
To specify the number of seats to reserve, update the number in the Cap field on the same row as any reserve caps you have added.
The total number of seats for all reserve caps must be lower than or equal to the section’s enrollment cap.
Please note that when you add multiple reserve caps, it does not combine the criteria of each. For example, if you add a reserve cap for honors students and another cap for Communication majors, it will set aside separate groups of seats for those two populations; it will not limit enrollment to just honors Communication majors. If you need to combine criteria in this way, please contact the Registrar’s Office to create a new reserve cap.
Updating Reserve Caps
To change the number of seats reserved for a particular reserve cap, simply adjust the number in the Cap field on the same row as the reserve cap. If you need to change the reserve cap on a class, it is best to delete the existing cap and a new row for the new reserve cap. See Dropping and Deleting Reserve Caps for more information about that process.
Dropping and Deleting Reserve Caps
If the trash icon is visible on a row, you can delete the reserve cap. However, once students who meet the criteria of a reserve cap have enrolled in the section, the reserve cap can no longer be deleted - the dropdown box will be grayed out and no trash icon will be visible. If you no longer wish to reserve seats for a particular population and cannot delete the reserve cap, you can drop the number of seats reserved accordingly.
Sections with Multiple Reserve Caps
If a class has multiple reserve caps and you want to leave one active while dropping the others, drop the cap of the group you wish to drop to match the number of seats taken by students who meet the reserve cap criteria.
For example, this class has an enrollment cap of 80 with 40 seats reserved for freshmen and 40 seats for sophomores:
If you wanted to release all the remaining seats reserved for sophomores and reserve them all for freshmen, first take a look at the Current Enrollments tab to see how many seats remain for each group:
In this view, you can see that only 20 of the seats reserved for sophomores have been taken. To reserve all the remaining seats for freshmen, go back to the Reserved Seats tab and change the sophomores group to 20 and then change the freshmen group to 60:
When you save the section, the values on the Current Enrollments will recalculate, showing that there are now 40 remaining seats for freshmen and zero for sophomores:
Using Reserve Cap Filters in CLSS
To find sections with reserve caps or to search for specific reserve cap criteria, select the Filter button near the top of the screen in CLSS:
Finding sections with reserve caps
In the Filter Sections interface, navigate to the Section group of filters and then locate the Reserved Seats Count field. In the text box, enter the filter criteria “>0” to find sections with at least one reserve cap:
You can adjust the criteria as needed. For example, to find sections with no reserve caps, use “0.” To find sections with multiple reserve caps, use “>1.”
Other reserve caps filters
Use the fields in the Reserved Seats group to filter on other reserve cap criteria:
Filter | Description |
Group Name | This is the short reserve cap description that appears on the schedule (e.g. “RC COMM majors”). If you know the full name of the reserve cap, you can type it here, but you may also use an asterisk (“*”) before and/or after keywords for partial matches. |
Requirement Group | If you know it, you can use the reserve cap code to filter (e.g. 001360 for the standard honors reserve cap). |
Enrollment | This refers to the number of students who meet the reserve cap criteria who have enrolled in the section. You can filter for an exact number or use greater/less than criteria (e.g. “>10” for greater than 10; “>=10” for greater than or equal to 10). |
Cap | The number of seats reserved for a particular requirement group. You can filter for an exact number or use greater/less than criteria (e.g. “>10” for greater than 10; “>=10” for greater than or equal to 10). |
Enrollment Ratio (%) | Use this field to identify reserve caps with a certain percentage of reserved seats used by students. Use whole numbers to represent percentages; you can filter for an exact number or use greater/less than criteria (e.g. “>10” for greater than 10; “>=10” for greater than or equal to 10). |
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