Issues affecting Waitlists on Non-Graded Instructional Formats

The Waitlist functionality for courses with non-graded sections is not working as expected.

What is the Issue?

Students can add themselves to a waitlist for a course section without having to register or waitlist in all the required activities for the course. 

The issue for waitlists managed by expiration (automated waitlists) is that when a student drops from the course, a notification may be sent to a student waitlisted for the graded (e.g. lecture) and a student waitlisted for the non-graded (e.g. lab).  When either student tries to accept the waitlist, they will not be able successfully register as the available seat for the other activity has been offered to another student. 

For example, Student A has waitlisted themselves for the lecture only, and Student B has waitlisted themselves for the lab only.  When Student C drops the course, seats become available in a lecture section and a lab section. Workday will then send notifications offering the available lecture section to Student A and the available lab section to Student B. 

In this scenario, neither Student A or B will be able to complete registration.  

To resolve this issue, IRP is changing the Waitlist capacity to 0 for waitlists on non-graded instructional formats managed by expiration. The waitlist capacity will stay on the section with the graded instructional format. This will ensure students on the waitlist can successfully register in any offered seats for all required activities. This change will not drop currently waitlisted students on non-graded instructional format waitlists but will prevent new students from joining these waitlists. Additional information is provided below outlining the next steps for dropping students.  

For waitlists managed manually, please be aware of this same issue: a student can register into the waitlist for a non-graded instructional format without having been waitlisted or registered in the graded instructional format. IRP will not be taking any actions for manually managed lists without a request to do so from the Unit.

Who is Impacted?

Students: 

• Students waitlisted in course sections with multiple instructional formats.
• Students that have waitlisted for a non-graded section (approximately 916 UBCV students and 66 UBCO students).   

This number does include students who are already registered in the graded section (lecture) and a non-graded section (lab) and have waitlisted themselves for a lab at an alternate time. The number also includes students that are not registered but are waitlisted in both the lecture and the lab. 

Staff supporting course registration: 

• Staff that set up Waitlists on course sections with non-graded sections and used the managed by expiration method and/or the manual method for the waitlist.

What is the impact?

Students: 

• Students seeking to waitlist themselves for alternate time(s) for the ungraded sections of a course will not be able to do so.

Staff supporting course registration: 

• Will need to communicate with students that were on the waitlist for the non-graded format.
• Will need to review and decide if any students from the non-graded format waitlist are to be added to the graded format waitlist.

What is the status?

Teams continue to investigate permanent resolution options with Workday and updates will be provided here as available.

Additional Details

Units (via their T-rep or department admin) that have had their waitlist capacity changed to 0 and have students on the waitlist, will be contacted by IRP to ask how they want to handle the drops for the students from the non-graded instructional format waitlists.

Manually managed waitlists can also make this change using the following steps:  

• Units set up waitlists on the Graded component of a course section.  
• Units update the waitlist capacity for non-graded components to “0” and drop students from the waitlist for those sections. 

If staff need support from IRP in updating waitlist capacities, submit a Workday Student Support Request at https://ubc.service-now.com/selfservice. 

If assistance is needed to mass drop from waitlists, submit a Workday Student Support Request at https://ubc.service-now.com/selfservice. 

Units are responsible for communicating with students. If IRP is assisting, IRP will provide units with the list of students that were dropped from the waitlist.