Ad Astra - Overland Park, Kansas

Wal C.

I work as an economics lecturer in higher ed and I would never recommend the classroom scheduling software. It programs to maximize room usage and ignores inconveniences like instructor classroom changes. It's so glaringly bad that it's become a question on one of my assignments about the mix of capital and labor and efficiency. Ad Astra software thinks in capital (room space and maximization) but ignores the labor input, thus while touted as being efficient, it's not as it ignores one of the two main inputs to make a class work. This software causes faculty to constantly switch classes and buildings with little time to take student questions between classes, even if the classroom we are in isn't being used the next period. It also fails in this regard: it programs in classrooms that are infrequently used for other reasons such as there's something wrong or undesirable about the location. Ad Astra means, "to the stars" and although I'm not a Latin scholar I think it more appropriately called, "Semper in Angaria Machina" or "Always enslaved to the machine" - probably got that wrong, but you get my point. If you are a decision-maker for a higher-ed institution, I urge you to look at other solutions. Or just have your capable administrative assistants work out your scheduling.

EDIT: Ad Astra responded, and I passed along their information on how to fix the issue to my institution. Adjusted review stars to reflect.

Jim H.

dylan F.

Jesse M.