Scheduling for university clubs - getting together across class timetables and part-time jobs
The reason a university club’s schedule does not come together is not the number of members. Even with 20 people, when it works, it is settled in 1 day; even with 8, when it does not, it takes 2 weeks. What makes the difference is whether members are in a position to answer “when am I free?”
College students’ schedules are made of 3 layers: the class timetable / part-time job shifts / required courses and practicums for each year. Two of these cannot be moved by the student’s own will, and they are confirmed at different times. If you send out candidate dates in a week when the timetable is not yet fixed, all you get back is △.
Follow the order in which the 3 layers are confirmed
Decide when to send out candidate dates by how many of these 3 layers are confirmed. Each layer narrows the usable slots, so asking before they finish narrowing gets you no answers.
The week’s open slots narrow as they pass through 3 layers
* The width of each bar suggests “the slots left after passing through that layer.” How much actually remains depends on the club’s makeup
Two conclusions follow from this chart. Sending out candidate dates at the start of the semester is wasted effort, and since the slots left after passing through all 3 layers are limited, once you find one, it pays to lock it in as a recurring slot rather than a one-off plan.
At the start of the semester, decide a “slot,” not “dates”
What you should do in April and October is not decide activity days one by one. It is to decide one slot, such as “Tuesdays from 18:00 this semester,” and not move it until the end of the semester. With a fixed slot, members can keep that weekday open when they submit their shift requests.
- Ask about slots after course registration is final. Answers before that are course wishes, not schedules
- Offer candidates as weekday and time pairs. List slots rather than dates, such as “Tue 18:00 / Wed 18:00 / Thu 16:00”
- Decide by looking at the breakdown by year. If you only look at the number of answers, the slot gets decided by the largest year and upperclassmen stop coming
- Do not change the slot mid-semester. Moving it even once wastes the effort of people who kept their shifts open for it
Only one-off plans outside the slot (training camps / tournaments / send-off parties for graduating members) are scheduled by date each time. If date scheduling drops to 3 or 4 times a semester, the organizer’s work becomes dramatically lighter.
Send out candidates before the shift request deadline
What moves attendance most is neither the number of candidate dates nor the response deadline, but the day you send them out. At workplaces that build shifts monthly, shift requests are often due in the middle to end of the previous month. If you send out candidate dates after that deadline, the answer is locked in as “I have work that day.”
So for one-off plans, send out candidates a month and a half before the event, that is, before shift requests for the month are submitted. Just telling people first, “The date isn’t set yet, but it will be one of these 3 days,” lets members leave those 3 days out of their shift requests. The point of a long lead time is not to give people time to think, but to claim the seat before other plans come in.
During club recruiting season, collect answers without asking for names
Scheduling for recruiting events alone needs a completely different design from other times of year. The people you are reaching are not members yet, and you have not exchanged contact details. If you first ask them to join a group or register, new students who were merely curious leave right there.
What you need is an attendance poll they can open with 1 tap from the QR code on a flyer handed out after class or on a poster, mark ○, and close. When you prepare a recruiting candidate list with PickDay, people answering do not need to create an account or enter their full name. If you add a note to the answer field saying “just your faculty and family name,” it does not turn into holding anyone’s contact details either.
Recruiting events draw more people when you hold the same content 2 or 3 times than when you gather everyone at once. Timetables differ by faculty, so if you narrow it to 1 session, an entire faculty may be unable to come. The step-by-step narrowing used in scheduling large groups works in reverse here. The right answer is to spread it over several sessions without narrowing.
If it still will not come together, stop looking for a day
If you have sent out candidates twice and still cannot get a majority, the problem is not how you are searching but your premise. Conclude that there is no slot where everyone can gather, and switch your approach.
- Decide the minimum attendance first. If you declare “we will go ahead if 6 people come,” there is no need to wait for everyone
- Split the slot in 2. For activities where different people can come to the first and second halves, make 2 slots a week and count attending either one as participating
- Split by year. Setting up a separate slot just for upperclassmen actually gathers more people than continuing to search for a slot where all years can come
A club’s activity is valued not by the number of days everyone was together, but by the number of weeks it kept going. Rather than stalling for 3 weeks looking for a day everyone can make, carrying on for 3 weeks with 6 people keeps more members in the end.