The flexible schedule option refers to other schedule variants such prioritizing P/S/L courses over all other types and then expanding the schedule to accommodate more students in a less dense manner or offering students additional options about how to complete the P/S/L portion of a course. Another example is to use student home distance from campus to drive the schedule. Students who live far away might start earlier, and could finish their in-person P/S/L before a certain date, thus reducing travel and staggering start times. Local students would start later and finish after a certain date.
A block schedule is a more dramatic schedule shift compared to “expanded or altered schedule” and reorganizes the schedule into larger time blocks. Specifically, for P/S/L courses this would concentrate a set of students into a more intensive period of activity. One example would be to replace 3h/wk for a 10wk period with a short but intensive time period such as 30h in one week for a cohort. The block schedule offers advantages of creating student cohorts and concentrating their in person experiences and minimize the number of days they are physically present as well as minimizing groups of students in spaces on days. It has the disadvantage of being hard to implement and impact a student’s entire schedule.
The block schedule would require Live25 or other such scheduling software. Live25 is already in place in engineering and LSA.