Duke University experienced the same challenges as most colleges and universities when it came to managing the complexities of course scheduling and making faculty teaching assignments.
Over the years like most schools, Duke administrative staff had developed their own assignment management processes using a combination of institutional knowledge, electronic faculty surveys and manually updated spreadsheets. It was always a struggle to match faculty teaching preferences with the schedule of courses needed to meet student needs.
This process was cumbersome, inefficient and filled with operational headaches.
After a decade of unprecedented growth when the number of faculty and students doubled, senior leaders knew there had to be a better way of matching the teaching preferences of faculty with the seemingly endless number of scheduling options when planning an academic calendar.
After determining that there were no apparent software systems available to address this increasingly difficult problem, the school's information technology team was charged with creating a solution that would:
- better engage faculty;
- take advantage of the faculty's experience and history in teaching specific courses;
- automate the course scheduling process for either one, or multiple semesters at a time, and
- create real-time administrative reports to ensure faculty were not over or under subscribed in their teaching assignments.
This was the beginning of TAMS; a data-driven teaching management system.
Over the next several months, TAMS developers worked directly with administrative staff, academic program directors, and faculty to create, test and implement this easy-to-use platform. TAMS uses institutional information that is readily available to create real-time solutions to the common problems associated with building an academic calendar and assigning the appropriate faculty to teach the needed courses.
As part of its academic mission, in the Spring of 2017, Duke University made the decision to offer TAMS under special license agreements to other schools, colleges and universities who might benefit from this innovative solution.
As a result of a number of informal requests from other schools who had heard about TAMS, Duke University began offering TAMS under special license agreements to other universities who might benefit from this innovative solution.
In 2019, we were proud to be a finalist in the NC Tech Awards in the digital transformation category.
