Time Slot Meeting Meaning

What you’ll learn to do: Use common planning tools to schedule business meetings

Obviously, before you conduct a meeting, you need to plan and schedule it. Often, getting everyone in the same space—physical, mental, or cyber—is the most challenging aspect of having a meeting. Luckily, there are sites and software that can make planning and scheduling a lot easier.

Your first email should include specific time slot offers, instead of unhelpful invitations such as 'my whole Tuesday is open'. Rule #2: Offer half hour blocks. All meetings should default to 30. Start: Select a date and time for your meeting. You can start your meeting at any time before the scheduled time. You can also manually enter any time. For example, you can enter 15 in the minutes field to schedule a time in a 15-minute increment. Time Zone: By default, Zoom will use your computer's time zone. Click the drop-down menu to select. A meeting email request asks to schedule a time, date and place where you and the recipient will see each other. In some cases, you may have a prearranged time and are confirming it. There are many benefits to scheduling a business meeting through email.

For planning, there are polling tools, such as SurveyMonkey. For scheduling, there are two kinds of tools:

• Scheduling sites, such as Doodle and Calendly.
• The scheduling tools on your company’s calendar software, such as Outlook, Google Calendar, or Mac Calendar. We’ll talk about these in a bit.

Learning Outcomes

• Discuss when and how to use polling tools
• Discuss when and how to use scheduling tools
• Identify the best time for a meeting using Doodle or Calendly

Polling Tools

In a meeting that has lots of people in various locations and several agenda items to accomplish, it can be a little scary to make sure you have all the details nailed down. Sending an email saying “what do you need?” not only can yield answers from “a flip-chart and markers” to “six webcams and a tap dancing iguana,” it’s also hard for you as the meeting planner to keep track of all the moving parts: schedule, topics, equipment, menu, location.

Conducting an online poll among your team members lets you collect all the information in one place and it gives you control over limiting the options. For example, if you are asking about equipment and supplies, you can choose to list only those items that are reasonable and easy to find. If you’re asking whether a meeting requires video chat, you can ask where people will be joining from. “Switzerland,” “the factory in Omaha” or “home with a broken ankle” are valid reasons for video chat. “Simultaneously watching Game of Thrones on my iPad” is not.

But you can also use polling to get an anonymous take on more serious issues around meetings.

Example

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation in which polling tools might be useful not just in deciding whether you serve pizza or burritos at the meeting but also in handling a challenging agenda item:

Shawn is a regional manager for a clothing retailer. He wants to have a meeting to share the results of some shop-alongs conducted in eight stores in his region by a qualitative researcher and a set of loyal customers. Most of the news is good, but there are a few issues to fix. Some of these issues are systemic and will require input from all his store managers. Others are limited to two specific stores and are concerning because they show those stores are not meeting basic customer service standards.

Shawn decides to send his own summary of the report to the store managers prior to a conference call, specifying the problems but not which stores have them, and asking managers to brainstorm on solutions in advance. Then he starts to plan his meeting agenda. He can envision this meeting playing out in a few different ways, and he can’t quite make up his mind how to proceed.

• Does he focus only on the positives and the systemic issues in this meeting and save the store-specific problems for one-on-one calls?
• Does he talk about the store-specific issues as a group, allowing the other managers to offer suggestions and support to the managers of the struggling stores?

Since all the managers have his summary, he decides to give them a say in how the meeting is run. He creates an account in SurveyMonkey, and he goes through the steps of making a survey.

The basic rules of survey creation are pretty simple at this level, and the software makes it easy.

• Ask as few questions as possible while still getting the needed information.
• Ask only questions that related to the issue at hand. Don’t ask questions just because you’re curious or want to provoke your respondents.
• Phrase questions in a way that gives a full range of options and doesn’t “beg the question.” That is, don’t ask a question like, “How much do you hate plaid pants?” and then give a ranking from “More than a root canal” to “About the same as a hangnail.” The plaid pants-lovers of the world will not be pleased.
• Think about the best question type for what you need to learn. In the scenario above, Shawn decided he really wanted to know how intensely his store managers felt about the agenda issues, so he chose a Ranking question to help them express it. He asked this same kind of question about “problems we face as a region” and “issues at individual stores.”

• He also wanted to give people an opportunity to express their feelings in their own words, especially if they didn’t want to talk about a topic, so he created a Comment question.

• Finally, he figured he would directly ask how bad news should be discussed. He had some ideas of his own, but he also wanted to be open to approaches he hadn’t thought of. For this, he used a Multiple Choice question type with a final Other option with a text box.

As you can see, a well-constructed poll or survey can really help a meeting host or leader plan for everything from snacks to serious issues.

Scheduling Tools

Scheduling meetings can also be a real challenge, especially if you have people in different time zones, people who are traveling, and/or people who work different shifts. Also, if you conduct large meetings or presentations, trying to keep track of everyone’s availability using pencil and paper—or worse, trying to corral people via email—can get really frustrating.

Online scheduling tools such as Doodle and Calendly allow you to make scheduling a lot easier by gathering all the information in one place and letting people enter their availability for the time slots offered. Here’s how they work, in brief:

• The meeting host or leader (let’s say that’s you) sets up a scheduling poll. It’s even easier than a SurveyMonkey poll because it’s only about scheduling. You select the possible time slots based on when you are available.
• Participants receive an email with a link to the question regarding the meeting schedule.
• They then choose all the times that work for them from the ones you have offered.
• You can schedule how often you receive updates on the poll, and you can log in to check on it at any time.
• Once all the participants have responded, you receive an email with a summary of their responses.
• You then choose the best time for the meeting based on their answers.
• You can have the software send meeting invitations with the time you chose and any other relevant text.
• Depending on individual settings, the software can populate each person’s calendar with the meeting information.

These applications will also let you schedule a bunch of one-on-one meetings, like performance reviews, for example. We’ll talk about that, too, in the next section.

Using Polling and Scheduling Tools

Doodle (doodle.com) is a free scheduling service you can use simply by creating a login. Doodle also allows you to ask your colleagues basic questions in poll form. It’s not as flexible as SurveyMonkey for multiple or complex questions, but it can handle “pizza or tacos” like a champ.

Scheduling

To create a scheduling question on Doodle for a meeting you are hosting or are responsible for scheduling, here are the steps to follow:

• First, decide how long you want the meeting to take. We’ll talk later in this module about how to figure out timing when you are meeting using audio, video, or screen sharing technology.
• Then make note of when the most important person at the meeting is available. Let’s call that person the Meeting VIP. That might be you or it might be whoever is presenting, leading, or most senior.
• Now it’s time to log into Doodle.
• From the dashboard on the home page, select “Schedule an Event.”
• You will then be asked to name the event, and you will have the option to add a location and a comment/note.
  • Name the event something that will be clear to those receiving the invitation.
    • “Tuesday Meeting,” “Bill’s Presentation,” or “Conference Call Follow-Up” might not be specific enough.
    • “Q2 Sales Recap,” “Weekly Planning Meeting,” or “Bill’s Presentation on Conference Highlights” are examples of more specific names that will help avoid confusion.
  • Add a location only if you are certain where it will be. If you’re not sure yet whether a meeting will be virtual or in-person—or if it might be in the manager’s office or the conference room depending on attendance—don’t include a location. People remember what they read first, and you don’t want cranky colleagues sitting in the break room while everyone else is at the coffee shop next door.
  • Notes can be helpful, especially if there are multiple meetings about the same topic, such as holiday planning or inventory.

• Next, you’ll see a calendar page that allows you to choose possible dates for the meeting. As you can see from the screenshot below, five dates have been selected.

• To the right of the calendar is a button that says, “Add Times.” Click this to choose specific times of day to offer to your participants. The software will let you choose the same times for all the days you’ve selected OR you can choose different times for each day depending on the availability of the Meeting VIP.
  • Let’s say you want to choose 9-10:15 and 2-3:15 on October 2. Simply put in the first time slot you want and then click “Add More Times.” Do this for as many separate slots as you need to.
  • It’s a good idea to break out separate blocks of time for your meeting even if you have a wide availability on a particular day. For example, if your Meeting VIP is free from 1-5 p.m., and you need to hold an hourlong meeting, set up your Doodle to show four separate time slots: 1:00-2:00, 2:00-3:00, etc.
  • At the very bottom of this page, under the list of time slots, you will see a note that says, “The time zone of your poll is . . .” and then a specific geographic time zone. Doodle should be basing this on where it detects you are. See the Notes On Scheduling box in Scheduling Remote Meetings later in this module for more about time zones.

• At the bottom of this page, there’s a button called Settings. Click on this to make some choices about how you want people to respond to your poll.

• • The first option—“Yes, No, If need be”—lets you give participants the option to say, essentially, “I can come at 2:00, but it’s not ideal for me.” It’s up to you whether you want to give people that choice.
  • The next setting choice applies to situations like one-on-one meetings or activities where you want only a few people participating at a time. If you click on this, it lets you choose the number of votes per option. For a performance review, you would want only one.
  • The next setting lets you choose to give each person only one vote. This would be good for one-on-one meetings or other situations where you want to limit people to one option. For meeting scheduling, this option should be off since you want to allow people to note all the times they are available.
  • Finally, you have the choice to make responses anonymous. If you are conducting a poll, this might be useful. For scheduling, you will probably want everyone to be able to see who is available at what times.
  • Once you have chosen all of your settings, click Confirm, and you will be taken back to the scheduling page.
• Once all of this is done, click on Continue, and you will be asked to enter your name and email address. Click Continue again.
• You will end up at the invitations page. Here you have a few choices.
  • You can choose Link, which allows you to copy the link to the poll and paste it into an email you compose yourself.
  • You can choose Email.
    • This will allow you to enter all the email addresses of the invitees, and the system will send them an email with the link.
    • You can then click Edit to see the message that will be sent. If you put anything into the Notes section, this will be the content of the email. Edit the message to be as clear as possible to your participants.

• Your participants will receive emails that look like this

• And every time someone completes the poll, you will receive an email letting you know. If that starts to drive you bananas, there’s a button to Unsubscribe From Updates at the bottom of your poll’s main page.
• If you want to check on your poll, log into Doodle and click on your dashboard. You’ll be able to see all of the polls you have running.

• Once everyone has responded to the poll, you can click on More at the top of the poll’s main page. Then click Choose Final Option. This means that you’ve looked at the poll, seen when people are most likely to be available, and now you’re ready to set the meeting time.
• The next screen will show you the final option you’ve chosen and offer to add it to your calendar.

Asking a Question

To ask a question using Doodle, you go through pretty much the same steps. Let’s say you want to ask what people would like for lunch during an upcoming lunch-and-learn. This time, from your dashboard, click Ask A Question. The title and note will be the content of your question. You will then go to a screen that lets you put in the options you want to offer. It’ll look something like this:

The important thing with a question like this is to remember to limit people to one vote. Ed from the warehouse will vote for pizza twelve times if you let him.

You will receive updates just like you do for a scheduling poll.

Most other scheduling platforms, including Calendly, Polldaddy, and Zoomerang function in a similar way to Doodle. Depending on your needs and preferences, you might end up liking one more than another.

A parent-teacher conference, parent-teacher interview, parent-teacher night or parents' evening, is a short meeting or conference between the parents and teachers of students to discuss a child's progress at school and find solutions to academic or behavioral problems.^[1] Parent-teacher conferences supplement the information conveyed by report cards by focusing on students' specific strengths and weaknesses in individual subjects and generalizing the level of inter-curricular skills and competences.^[2]

Most conferences take place without the presence of the students whose progress is being discussed,^[2] although there is evidence that their inclusion increases the productivity of the meetings.^[3] The meetings are generally led by teachers who take a more active role in information sharing, with parents relegated mostly to the role of listeners.^[4]

Types[edit]

Parent-teacher conferences exist in a variety of different forms, depending on a country, school district and individual school. The subtypes are characterized by the following attributes.

Mode[edit]

Like most other meetings, parent-teacher conferences can take the form of face-to-face meetings in which parents and teachers meet in person, or electronic meetings that are conducted over the phone or via video conferencing systems like Skype or Google Voice. Face-to-face meetings offer personal contact but require that parents and teachers meet at physically the same place during the meeting. These interviews are usually between five and fifteen minutes long.

In case of electronic parent-teacher conferences, neither parents nor teachers need to be at school or other common location and can participate in the meeting from home or while working or traveling. The school does not need to reserve rooms for the meetings and there is more flexibility in finding suitable time. The disadvantages of electronic are a lack of face time that many participants are used to and a need for the availability to unfailing technology.

Parent-teacher interviews are a tradition in Western school systems, such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the United States. In the United States, many elementary schools will shorten the school day by 2–3 hours (often for an entire week) in mid fall to allow extra time for teachers to give these conferences.

Time Slot Meeting Meaning List

Participants[edit]

Parent-teacher conferences can be

• one-on-one meetings between a parent and a teacher. This type is used when different subjects are taught by different teachers and parents meet the teachers for all different subjects individually. The type offers most confidentiality and allows the discussion of information specific to a student in a particular subject. The downside of the type is that the meetings are hard to schedule because they require multiple time slots and meeting places.
• many-to-one meeting is a meeting between multiple parents and one teacher. Usually the students whose parents attend the meeting are in the same class/year and the teacher is either the teacher of a particular subject or the assigned class teacher. This type is common in elementary schools. It is relatively easy to schedule but lacks privacy for discussing the progress of particular students.
• one-to-many meeting between one parent and multiple teachers. This type can be used if a child has problems in multiple subjects or when a parent comes to school outside the regularly scheduled parent-teacher conference time to meet several teachers at once.
• many-to-many meetings between multiple parents and multiple teachers. This type of meeting is easy to use for electing board members or disseminating general information about school, calendar of events, changes in common regulations, etc. It is inefficient for discussing issues that are specific of particular students and lacks needed privacy.

Frequency[edit]

Parent-teacher conferences usually take place once every school term, although some schools organize only one meeting during (mostly at the beginning of) the school year.

Duration[edit]

The duration of parent-teacher conferences depends on the frequency of conferences and the number of participating parents and teachers. Annual meetings with multiple participants may last two hours or longer; one-to-many and many-to-one meetings once a term may last for an hour; one-on-one meetings once a year may last 15 minutes, one-on-one meetings once a term tend to last 5–10 minutes.^[2][4]

Location[edit]

Most face-to-face meetings take place at school. One-to-many meetings may take place in separate meeting rooms, many-to-one meetings in larger classrooms and one-to-one and many-to-one meetings in the school hall, aula or auditorium, with many one-to-one meetings happening simultaneously in different parts of the room.^[5]

Regional variations[edit]

Australia[edit]

In Australian educational system, the meetings are known as parent-teacher interviews or parents' nights.^[6] The exact practice varies by state and by school type. Some states mandate that the interviews be conducted, others do not. Government and non-government schools also follow different federal educational laws.

Some schools have only one round of interviews per year, others have more. Two rounds is common, with terms 1 (Feb-April) and 3 (July–September) being popular times. Many schools offer multiple dates, splitting interviews either by class or by name (e.g. a-k/l-z).

There is often keen demand by parents for times with teachers, though a common observation from teachers is that it is the parents who they don't need to see who attend interviews, while parents who should attend often do not.^{[citation needed]}

Canada[edit]

In Canadian educational system, the meetings are known as parent-teacher interviews.^[7]

Parent-teacher interviews are mandatory for all Ontario (Canada) elementary and secondary school teachers. Parents have the right to be allotted time for this purpose under the Ministry of Education.

Canadian Living criticizes parent-teacher interviews for their class bias. Often only the most privileged children's parents will attend the interviews and the children more likely to need extra assistance will not have their parents attend.^[8]

Singapore[edit]

In Singapore, the meeting is known as school parent meeting.^[9]

United States[edit]

In US educational system, the meeting is known as parent-teacher conference.^[3]

The conferences are usually held twice a year, at the end of the first quarter and at the end of the third quarter, with each meeting lasting about 15–20 minutes. The parents typically choose the time that is best for them, and the teacher schedules the conference accordingly. The specific practices vary within school districts.^[2]

In the United States, many elementary schools will shorten the school day by 2–3 hours (often for an entire week) in mid fall to allow extra time for teachers to give these conferences.

The difference between parent-teacher conferences and a PTA meetings is that the former focus on students' academic progress while the latter organize more extra-curricular activities.

Some counties in the US have proposed to consider it a legal violation for parents or guardians who fail to attend at least one parent-teacher conference during the school year.^[10] Some charter schools have already made the event a required event for parents to attend.

United Kingdom[edit]

In UK educational system, the meeting is known as parent-teacher conference or parents' evening.^[4] The event is often held in the school hall and adjacent communal spaces where parents move through a series of eight to nine face-to-face 5 minute consultations with individual teachers.^[4]

Scheduling[edit]

The task[edit]

Scheduling parent-teacher conferences involves finding a time that suits both parents and teachers with their existing time constraints and finding locations for the meetings. If all meetings would be independent without any dependencies, the planning of the meetings simplifies to unordered timetabling rather than full-scale scheduling where events need to be scheduled in a certain order, often because the output of one event forms an input for another.

In most cases, certain dependencies exist: parents prefer not to wait too long between different interviews but need long enough breaks to move from one location to another or locations in close proximity.

Methods[edit]

Various methods exist for scheduling parent-teacher conferences.

In the simplest case, the meetings are not pre-scheduled at all, parents come to school and line up to see each teacher they want to see. Meetings happen on a first-come basis.^[5]

Meetings can be scheduled in person, by phone or on-line.

In person[edit]

In person scheduling can be done in two ways:

1. Parents come to school's administrative office to schedule meetings; scheduling is done by a school administrator.
2. Students schedule meeting times with teachers by carrying a booking sheet and asking teachers to allocate times that are still available. Teachers have their own booking sheet and they mark the time on both sheets. Parents usually have the option of indicating which teachers they wish to see and the preferred times.^[4][6]

The advantage of the first is that teachers need not be involved in scheduling, the disadvantages are that a special middleman is required. The method is centralized in the sense that it is directed by neither a parent nor a teacher.

The advantage of the second is that parents need not be involved in scheduling, the disadvantages are that teachers need to do the scheduling after their classes are over or during break times that they would otherwise need for rest, prepare for classes or advising students, parents do not know which slots the teachers have available and often get times that aren't suitable or optimal (booking schedules are optimized from the point of view of the teacher, not the parent); if a student doesn't want his/her parent to see teachers, all he/she may just not make the bookings, or leave it so late that there are no times available.

By phone[edit]

Scheduling by phone also involves a parent and a school administrator to do the scheduling without parents needing to be physically at school at the time of the scheduling. In principle, the middlemen could be avoided by automated scheduling by phone but is currently hindered by the lack of sophisticated speech analysis. This process can cause high levels of demand on school offices.

On-line[edit]

On-line scheduling is done by using appointment scheduling software on the internet. The advantages of the system are that it is automated without a need for a middleman, centrally optimized both for parents and for teachers without the need to involve students.

Complexity[edit]

Time Slot Meeting Meaning Dictionary

Computationally, the scheduling problem is a NP-complete problem and in the same complexity class with other problems that involveconstraint satisfaction and combinatorial optimization (so no fast algorithms are known for solving it).

This can be seen as follows. We can check in time polynomial to the input size whether certain time slot assignment satisfies parent-teacher conference scheduling (PTCS) constraints. Therefore, PTCS ∈ NP. Ignoring constraints that complicate scheduling even further, let's only consider the constraints on parent availability (e.g. assuming that all teachers, rooms and time slots are always available). Then there exists a simple polynomial transformation of the class-teacher assignment problem with teacher availability constraints (CTTA) in school timetable construction ^[11] to the PTCS problem: namely, map class instances to teacher instances, teacher instances to parent instances, time slots to time slots (identity map), and teacher availability to parent availability. So if the PTCS problem were polynomial-time solvable by some algorithm, the transformation described above and the algorithm could be used to solve the CTTA problem too and the CTTA task would be polynomially solvable as well. But CTTA has been earlier proved to be NP-complete by the reduction from the NP-complete 3-SAT problem,^[12] so the PTC scheduling problem cannot be polynomially solvable either, and has to be NP-complete.

Management[edit]

Optimized scheduling is advantageous only as long as the participants keep to the schedule by attending the meetings and starting and finishing on time. The latter can be achieved by a school bell or electronic voice-over message played over the school PA system, at each change of interview time (E.g. 'Please move to your next interview'), avoiding to schedule very short interview times that are harder to keep running on time, scheduling empty slots at intervals to assist in bringing events back onto time if they are running over. General time management techniques apply.

On-time running[edit]

Parents sometimes complain that schedules are not running on time, causing them to miss interviews, or be cut short. This is usually due to either parents or teachers electing to continue talking beyond their booked time slot. One factor that naturally reduces this effect is the presence of another parent ready to start the next interview and clearly in view of the teacher. There are several other options that can assist on-time running of events:

Time Slot Meeting Meaning Funny

• Bell, chime or electronic voice-over automatically played over the school PA system, at each change of interview time. (E.g. 'Please move to your next interview')
• Large clock display projected on the hall screen, ensuring there is no doubt of the exact time, and encouraging participants to be mindful of the time.
• Strongly reminding, and encouraging teachers to stick to advertised times.
• Steering away from very short interview times, which are harder to maintain on-time running (e.g. 5 minutes), in favour of slightly longer duration interviews that may better suit the time required to talk about issues. Short durations like five minutes ensure more can fit into the event, yet if on-time running fails, the benefit is lost.
• Provision of spacer interview slots at intervals for all teachers with busy schedules, to act as a time buffer – assisting in bringing events back onto time if they are running over.
• Systems that offer optimised scheduling of interviews can provide significantly more compact parent schedules. Parents then have reason to finish their current conversation on time, namely to get to their own next meeting. The natural tendency is often for parents stay longer at an interview, which may be acceptable if both the parent and the teacher do not have another interview immediately following. Optimised parent schedules are also beneficial to the parents by reducing time on-site, and by significantly reducing numbers of idle parents (event congestion).

Discussion[edit]

Parent-teacher conferences have been criticized for their class bias and inefficiency because the meetings are attended mostly by the parents of more privileged children, while the parents of the children who are more likely to need extra assistance do not attend.^[7]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Rabbitt, J. (1978). 'The parent/teacher conference: Trauma or teamwork?'. Phi Delta Kappan. 59: 471–472.
2. ^ ^abcdHackmann, D.; J. Kenworthy; S. Nibbelink (1998). 'Student empowerment through student-led conferences'. Middle School Journal. 30: 35–39.
3. ^ ^abMinke, Maggie and Barbara M. Walker; Kellie J. Anderson (Sep 2003). 'Restructuring routine parent-teacher conferences: The family-school conference model'. The Elementary School Journal. 104 (1): 49–69. doi:10.1086/499742. JSTOR3203049.
4. ^ ^abcdeMacLure, Maggie; Barbara M. Walker (March 2000). 'Disenchanted evenings: The social organization of talk in parent-teacher consultations in UK secondary schools'. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 21 (1): 5–25. doi:10.1080/01425690095135. JSTOR1393356.
5. ^ ^abSwiderek, B. (1997). 'Parent conferences'. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 40: 580–581.
6. ^ ^ab'Busting myths: Parent teacher interview systems'. Education Matters Secondary. Australian Publishing Resource Service. 2011. Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
7. ^ ^abErmann, Ryan (June 14, 2010). 'Ask an expert: Improving parent-teacher interviews'. Canadian Living.
8. ^9 February 2008.
9. ^'School of Science and Technology School Parent Meeting reminder'. SST School Website. September 12, 2011. Archived from the original on April 18, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2013.
10. ^Cameron, Linda (February 9, 2008). 'Worthy Proposes Punishment for Skipping Parent-Teacher Conferences'. MyFOX Detroit.
11. ^Willemen, Robertus (2002). School timetable construction: Algorithms and complexity(PDF). Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.
12. ^Even, S.; A. Itai; A. Shamir (1976). 'On the complexity of timetable and multicommodity flow problems'. SIAM Journal on Computing. 5: 691–703. doi:10.1137/0205048.

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