Dict-Physical

View VMF_TeachSection

Card of view VMF_TeachSection

Name	VMF_TeachSection
Comment	Fact/view housing information on what instructors taught what courses. See documentation on MF_TeachSection in the StarsAcademicRecord package. This view is utilized primarily as a linking table, facilitating many-to-many connections between faculty and sections. Please note that most of the data fields here (other than count) are not reliably or consistently enough maintained to be useful. Beware!
Dimensional Type	Fact

SQL query of the view VMF_TeachSection

select
   MD_Sect_SurrogateKey,
   MD_CollPers_SurrogateKey,
MD_CarlTerm_SurrogateKey,
MD_Course_SurrogateKey,
   MF_TeachSect_ColleagueID,
   MF_TeachSect_Load,
MF_TeachSect_CreditsTaught,
   MF_TeachSect_Percent,
   MF_TeachSect_Method,
   MF_TeachSect_Count
from
MF_TeachSection

List of outgoing view references of the view VMF_TeachSection

ViewReference_70

VMD_Section

ViewReference_71

VMD_Instructor

ViewReference_72

VMD_CarlTerm (Shortcut)

ViewReference_73

VMD_Course

List of shortcuts of the view VMF_TeachSection

VMF_TeachSection

VMF_TEACHSECTION

View

ViewsAcademicRecord

List of diagrams containing the view VMF_TeachSection

ViewsAcademicRecordDiagram

List of permissions of the view VMF_TeachSection

SELECT,VIEW DEFINITION

AcadRecordReader

SELECT,VIEW DEFINITION

FacultyReader

List of view columns of the view VMF_TeachSection

MD_Sect_SurrogateKey

numeric

MD_CollPers_SurrogateKey

numeric

MD_CarlTerm_SurrogateKey

numeric

MD_Course_SurrogateKey

numeric

MF_TeachSect_ColleagueID

char(7)

Used for internal load/bookeeping purposes, by data warehouse ETL processes. Do not expose to users, except possibly in the case of Analysis Services cubes, where we're looking for a unique faculty count.

MF_TeachSect_Load

float

This field contains the value used by the Dean of the College and other to determine what percentage of their contractually obligated service/teaching load a given faculty member is fulfilling by teaching a given class. Typically the value here will be 1 (meaning 1 course equivalent). If an instructor is teaching a half-term course, or the course is being team taught, that value will naturally be less than 1.

Workload serves as the sole basis for calculating credit towards completion of teaching obligations. Conterintuitively, the "percent" value attached to instructor + section combinations (instructor X teaches section Y) is not used for these calculations.

This data, i.e., the workload has not been kept consistently and accurately enough over time, before 2010-11, to make it truly useful for longitudinal analysis, although we do the best we can here to make it consistent (on which, see below).

Part of the reason for the inconsistency is that the workload value has been implemented in different ways at different times. In 2008-09 and before it was a decimal value, typically 16.67. Since most faculty were at that point on a six-course load, this number was contrived so that if multiplied by six, it would equal 100, i.e., a full load. When we moved to a mixed five/six-course load (2009-10 and later), the scale of values entered was changed to simple integers. In order to calculate what portion of his/her contractually obligated load a given instructor is fulfilling one must, in the 2009-10 and later world, divide the aggregated load, across all his/her courses and releases for the year, by the instructor's contractual load (e.g., if the contractual load is 5, and the instructor is teaching 4 courses plus a big committee assignment [= 1 course], then we get 5/5, i.e., a full load).

Here we convert old values (8.33, 16.67, etc) to new values (.5, 1, etc.), but the conversion process is imperfect.

Note that workload here means something different from what it means to HR staff (who use workloads the way HR staffs in other institutions use FTE values). This difference becomes particularly important when it comes to folks who are both faculty and staff. The workload value here will only reflect the academic work load, not the FTE value across all appointments/positions, as maintained by HR.

MF_TeachSect_Credits

float

Calculated as *MaxCredits (section) / course duration in terms) * percent value assigned instructor for this course (e.g., .5 if they were teaching 50% of the course). For multi-term courses, credits are allocated evenly across all terms, even if this is not what actually happened in the course.

MF_TeachSect_Percent

float

Floating point number between 0 and 1 indicating what percentage of a particular class is being taught by a particular instructor.

This data is not kept consistently and accurately enough over time to make it truly useful. Instead we attach workloads to specific instructor and course pairs. Credit towards completion of teaching obligations is actually given according to these workloads, not on the basis of any calculations involving the percentage.

Do not expose to users therefore.

MF_TeachSect_Method

varchar(32)

Degenerate dimension that distinguishes lab instruction from lecture, etc. Since 1996 this data is more or less reliable.

Note that during the 90s (the precise end date is unclear, probably before 1996) we used to combine lecture and lab sections often, but mark the faculty role in those sections multiple times, each one with a different instructional method and another associated workload.

Current practice is to create separate sections for labs, so that the relationship between instructor and method is 1 to 1. In cases where this is not so, as described above, we select one method arbitrarily.

MF_TeachSect_Count

int

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