Scheduling 101: Using Jiffle to schedule appointments with students

(Yes, this seems like an unnecessary step to me, too.)

(Make sure you specify the right time zone!)

I have a page on my wiki with my typical weekly schedule and directions for how to make an appointment. Students are free to drop by during office hours–bright yellow–without an appointment of any kind (though they’re encouraged to make an appointment to ensure that I’ll be available). Students are also free to request an appointment during my afternoon work hours–light green–though I may be busy with research or class prep or committee meetings.

Advantages of this system:

1. I can point students to this page whenever they want to make an appointment with me, and
2. It’s really pretty.

Disadvantages of this system:

1. Students seem to get confused by this page,
2. Though it helps clarify things, it still requires multiple emails back and forth, and
3. It still requires me to manually add an appointment to my Google calendar (which I realize is not the end of the work, but something automated sure would be nice).

I believe that Jiffle will allow me to accomplish what I want to accomplish while avoiding the disadvantages of my current system.

A dialog box will appear, allowing you to indicate start and finish times for your availability on that date.

When you’re done, just click the "OK" button.

Repeat the "indicate available times" process as necessary. Different dates, different times… as much as you like.

• On the left, students will see simple and easy-to-understand (fingers crossed!) instructions for how to request an appointment.
• On the right, they’ll see the available appointment times for the week of Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2009.

These are the easy-to-follow (fingers crossed!) directions from the Jiffle web site:

To sync your Jiffle Calendar and Google Calendar you must first enable this feature:

1. Click on Preferences > Google Account
2. Enter your Google Preferences:
   • Gmail ID: enter your Gmail e-mail address
   • Password: enter your Gmail password
   • Sync to Google: check this box if you would like to enable your Jiffle calendar appointments to show on your Google Calendar, and your Google appointments on your Jiffle calendar.
3. Click Save

A Google tab will be created in your Jiffle account. Here you will be able to see your Google Calendar with the Jiffle meeting you have scheduled and the times that you have marked as available.

Now, I choose to trust Jiffle with my Gmail ID and Password–it’s the required information for logging into my Google Calendar account–but I’d certainly understand anyone who decided that this was not something they wanted to do. You’re not required to integrate your existing online calendar with Jiffle: this process works fine without doing so. However, it’s pretty nice to have your 2 calendaring systems working together, in my opinion, because it eliminates some of the repetitive tasks that scheduling can require.

I’ll leave it to our resident API expert, Julie, to weigh in whether or not it’s really necessary for Jiffle to have this information.

Note that this is the view from inside my account; this is not the public view of my calendar. It’s possible to make parts of your Google Calendar visible to others, but that’s a subject for a later blog post.

Again, this is my view of my Jiffle calendar, not my students’ view.

After the instructor sends the Jiffle calendar link to the students, this is what they’ll see when they go to that address.

In this hypothetical example, a student wants to meet at 2:30.

To begin the process of requesting an appointment, just click a time to make a dialog box appear.

The dialog box asks the student for a few key pieces information. I would instruct students to fill these in as follows:

• Name: A full name is probably a good idea, maybe even including the course number.
• Email: This is the address to which the instructor response will be sent.
• Phone: If the instructor has said that phone numbers are needed, then provide one.
• Duration: How long does the meeting need to last?
• Subject: Don’t just type your name or the course. Instead, put something meaningful here.
• Message: Explain what you’d like to discuss at the meeting.

Once the student clicks “Send,” an email is sent to the instructor.

This is a great feature, and here’s why:

• My hypothetical student Derek doesn’t assume that this meeting time is confirmed until the instructor has responded to his request (see below), and
• and other students won’t be able to sign up for that time, even though I haven’t committed to meeting with Derek. They know, however, that they might be able to check back and find that time slot is available.

Note that in my tutorial yesterday on using Doodle, none of this is possible. (That doesn’t mean Doodle cannot do this, just that I don’t know how to do this with Doodle.)

You’ll find the student’s meeting request in your email inbox. After opening the email notification from Jiffle, you can read the comments the student wrote, hopefully explaining why the student wants to meet.

Next, just accept or decline the meeting by clicking on the link at the bottom of the email.

Once you click on that link in the email, you’ll be taken to a Jiffle web page where you can respond to the student’s request. Just specify a location (if necessary), write some comments, and click "Accept Meeting"

The student will then receive an email with confirmation of the meeting, and your calendars (Google as well as Jiffle) will automatically be updated to reflect this new appointment (see below).

Once Jiffle and Google Calendar are integrated, your approval of the request will make the appointment appear on your schedule on Google Calendar. This means you don’t have to take the extra step of logging into your calendar and manually adding the appointment.

The Monday at 2:30 time slot no longer says "Available" and it no longer says "Pending." It’s just blank. Students after hypothetical student Derek will just have to pick another time.