With May just around the corner, it’s time to start wrapping up the semester and with it, the academic year. This can be a hectic time for both university staff and students.
Between finals week, housing check-out, and wrapping up any outstanding financial aid issues, there’s a lot to do and not too much time to do it in.
You want to make sure you accommodate all students while simultaneously leaving enough time to properly finish all your upcoming end-of-semester tasks.
Keep reading to see how school scheduling software can help you manage your busy schedule with ease, giving both you and your students plenty of time to spare.
How to use school scheduling software for housing check-out
Housing check-out is one activity that can quickly get overwhelming.
For one, if you don’t have any concrete schedule attached to the check-out process, you will most likely create a bottleneck.
Let’s imagine you inform students that they can check out any time from Monday, May 16th to Friday, May 20th from 9 AM until 8 PM.
Since you have such a wide date and hour span, there will be lulls where you will be sitting around waiting aimlessly. This is valuable time you could spend doing other necessary end-of-semester activities.
Other times, so many students will show up at once that they’ll start to form a line and most likely get frustrated. You will feel pressured to rush through the check-out process for each student, which could cause you to omit important steps or details.
A situation like the one above just isn’t worth either your or the students' time.
So you know the problem, but what’s the solution?
You can use school scheduling software, like YouCanBook.me, to seamlessly organize the housing check-out process for your students.
By creating a dedicated housing check-out booking page (see our example here), you can allow students to sign up for 15-minute check-out appointments.
You can share the link to this booking page in various ways to make sure students access it:
- Send an email to your housing community with the booking link
- Include it in your dedicated check-out process webpage
- Add a QR code to printed flyers detailing the process
Students will be able to click on the time slot that works for them and will be taken to a booking form to fill out their info.
You can then customize the booking form so the student can provide all the important information you need, such as:
- Their name and contact information
- Where they live
- Their reason for checking out
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💡Pro-tip: Add terms to the booking form and require students to agree to them before they can schedule their appointment. This will help you ensure that students have read through and understand the most important points of the check-out process.
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Awesome, the appointment is booked! Now what?
The next step that will come in handy is YouCanBookMe’s email confirmation.
These will automatically be sent to the student once they book an appointment. You can use these to include any further information you need to give about the check-out process.
For example, you can add links to any:
- forms students need to complete,
- steps they need to take,
- or information they should keep in mind while checking out.
The confirmation emails also include two useful links that will help your students: one to cancel and one to reschedule their appointment.
Students can simply click on the corresponding text and either choose a new free time on the schedule or cancel their appointment. 
Either way, this will save you time otherwise wasted waiting around for a no-show. Plus, it frees up the appointment space for other students to use.
Worried that students will cancel or reschedule at the last minute?
You can set limits to when the students can use these features. For example, you can make it so they cannot cancel or reschedule if their appointment is in 12 hours or less.
Next, you can automate email and SMS reminders. This will help your students remember when they signed up for check-out and make sure they have enough time to properly clean out and prepare their room.
You can also send a follow-up message after the check-out appointment ends, just to confirm everything went smoothly and include contact information in case they have any further questions.
And there you have it!
An efficient and thorough way to check out ensures both you and your students aren’t wasting time manually scheduling appointments or waiting on others.
How to use school scheduling software for finals week events
If students could use one word to summarize finals week, what would it be?
We bet they would choose “stress.”
According to recent data, finals and midterms were the top source of stress for 31% of U.S. students.
Planning a few special activities for students during finals week can provide them with a healthy outlet to unwind and truly take a break.
You can easily coordinate fun activities using an online scheduling tool. Plan a few events, such as hiking, yoga, or a comedy show.
Next, create a separate booking page for each of these activities. You can set different appointment types and lengths to tailor to each one.
Then you can group them all together onto one page that links out to all the different events. Check it out in action here.
Once again, you can use the booking form to collect the students’ info and ask any relevant questions.
As you may have noticed, most of the activities mentioned above are group activities. Using YouCanBook.me’s calendar booking software, you can allow up to 50 bookings per time slot to make scheduling these a breeze.
Just like with the housing check-out booking page, make sure this link is easily accessible to all students. You can post about it on social media, send an email, and include it on your website.
Next, add all the most important info (such as where to meet and what to bring) to the confirmation email.
Since students are pretty busy during finals week, send a reminder to help them manage their packed schedules.
Now you can sit back and focus on planning the actual activities, instead of squandering time managing the scheduling.
How to use school scheduling software for student financial services
Finances are another area of university life that unfortunately cause a lot of tension and unease for students.
In an Ohio State University study, 7 out of 10 U.S. college students report being stressed about finances and 60% worry about having enough money to pay for school.
It’s important for students to have all their questions answered, get their finances in order, and wrap up any outstanding procedures or paperwork before the semester ends, especially if they are graduating.
You can make this easier on your financial aid and student services counselors by creating booking pages with different types of appointments.
That way, all parties know what to expect and can plan accordingly.
See below or click here for an example:
You can use the confirmation email to remind students what to prepare for their appointment, as there could be information or certain forms that are needed depending on the topic at hand.
In the automated follow-ups, make sure to include the link to your booking page so that students can schedule new appointments right away!
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💡 Pro-tip: we’re guessing you have more than one advisor on your staff. With YouCanBook.me, you can automatically assign a random team member to an appointment or have the student select which advisor they want to meet with.
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Simplify your end-of-semester flow
We know there is nothing more important to you than focusing on student success. That’s why we want to make sure you can simplify your scheduling to make time for what really matters.
We wish you a fabulous end of the semester, stress-free finals week, and want to congratulate you on helping the class of 2022 prepare for the next step in their journeys: the real world! They couldn’t have done it without you.
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