2 Rooms for one activity

[gesamtschule]

Hi,
at our school there a some situations where it become useful to define 2 rooms for one activity. This become useful if you split a year in different ways. In such a situation it is often easier to make some analysis at start and look which subgroups are really necessary and which one it is easier to have in mind. So let me give you an example.

At year 9 and 10 we used every possibility to split the years. So we decided to create 1 activity for subject sport  for year 9 and 10 and put 2 teachers to this activity. The splitting into male and female we have in mind (and for every one at the school this is clear). But of course we need 2 rooms where the sport activity could place.
So this is for us a minor issue on the program.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Say you have A1(T1, T2, Y1, Y2) and you need this to be in 2 rooms. Then add dummy activity Ad(no teachers, no students sets) and constraint activities same starting time, A1, Ad. Then preferred rooms for A1 and Ad: sport room1, sport room2.

[gesamtschule]

Ok that's a possible hack but I don't think that it is a nice solution. This time we only need this for 1 activity so it is easy, but at other schools I know that they need such thing for nearly every activity and than it will be become really nasty to define such a lot of dummy activities.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Yes, but it would be difficult to add 2 rooms for the same activity into FET.

Maybe you could divide the years according to categories, and obtain girls and boys groups.

[Volker Dirr]

Maybe you could divide the years according to categories, and obtain girls and boys groups.

Yes, that is the best solution. I guess "gesamtschule" is a teacher at a "gesamtschule" (a special secondary school in Germany). The "problem" of that school is, that they have very many categories. It will be stupid to add so many categories into FET, because FET will generate much more subgroups then students are at that school.

To solve that problem, you need to do a courseplaning with student names. Please ask a teacher of a "Gymnasium" (also special secondary school in Germany) how to do it best, because my experience it very low in that.
If you done that, you just need to enter that into FET.
The courses are "groups"
The student names (or better unique id's) are the "subgroups".
You will be maybe much faster, if you import/export that by cvs file. FET is able to do that. I can help you with importing that files.

[gesamtschule]

Well if I follow this strategy consequently. I really had 1 student as a subgroup and put them in groups together. I see 2 problem with this:

1. Increasing the number of subgroups so heavily will make the work of fet really hard, so it will runs very long.

2. It will become difficult to handle the in and output.

At least not only in Gesamtschulen it is necessary for some subjects to use 2 rooms. I think it is  natural to use 2 rooms if you have 2 Teachers which is perfectly possible.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Well if I follow this strategy consequently. I really had 1 student as a subgroup and put them in groups together. I see 2 problem with this:

1. Increasing the number of subgroups so heavily will make the work of fet really hard, so it will runs very long.

2. It will become difficult to handle the in and output.

At least not only in Gesamtschulen it is necessary for some subjects to use 2 rooms. I think it is  natural to use 2 rooms if you have 2 Teachers which is perfectly possible.

I think point 1 is not correct. I think that FET would have comparable speed. Please try and see.

[Volker Dirr]

2. It will become difficult to handle the in and output.

Yes and no.
Yes, but you can't do it different, only if you narrow possible solutions. But that is only possible with easy timetables (very small schools). It must be done different to big schools!
No, because school use special software for that. It is "course planning software". All big school I know have 2 softwares
a) a courseplanning software
b) a timetabling software
You are talking about problem a), but FET is no courseplanning software. But FET can import your courseplanning. I already wrote in CSV importfilter for that. If your courseplanning software use on other file format, just contact me and i will try to add special import filter.

At least not only in Gesamtschulen it is necessary for some subjects to use 2 rooms. I think it is  natural to use 2 rooms if you have 2 Teachers which is perfectly possible.

I also know many activities with 2 teachers that don't need a second room. (All team teaching activities)

So it is a problem that can not be solved with satisfaction to both.

[Liviu Lalescu]

In the algorithm it is very difficult to add several rooms for a single activity.

So, I suggest dummy activities. It is the same as if I implemented 2 rooms for the same activity, from the point of view of algorithm speed.

[gesamtschule]

In the algorithm it is very difficult to add several rooms for a single activity.

OK if it to difficult we can handle it by hand. It was just an idea which looks easy to implement and useful for others.

So, I suggest dummy activities. It is the same as if I implemented 2 rooms for the same activity, from the point of view of algorithm speed.

Always remember: The speed is one thing the complexity of the input data another.

[gesamtschule]

@Volker: We are definitely a small school and don't have the money for courseplanning software. But I think it's possible to solve a lot of this problems with some analysis at the beginning.

[Liviu Lalescu]

In the algorithm it is very difficult to add several rooms for a single activity.

OK if it to difficult we can handle it by hand. It was just an idea which looks easy to implement and useful for others.

So, I suggest dummy activities. It is the same as if I implemented 2 rooms for the same activity, from the point of view of algorithm speed.

Always remember: The speed is one thing the complexity of the input data another.

OK, I'll think of that some more. But it is difficult even to define the notion that an activity needs 2 rooms.

[Volker Dirr]

We are definitely a small school and don't have the money for courseplanning software.

Course planning software is also available for free (but not open). Just ask your Chef ("Kultusminister" / "Landesregierung"). I don't know from what country ("Bundesland") you are, but most of them offer Software. Some of them only sent them by CD (no download by Internet.)
Example:
NRW is http://www.svws.nrw.de/
Bayern is http://www.schule.bayern.de/winsv/
Niedersachen is http://nibis.ni.schule.de/nibis.phtml?menid=653

But I think it's possible to solve a lot of this problems with some analysis at the beginning.

Yes, that is correct. By doing a good lesson planning you can already avoid a lot of conflicts. By doing a bad lesson planing you are also able to get an unsolvable dataset. So so the even the best timetabling software can only say: "Sorry, that will never be solvable."

[Volker Dirr]

Hi,

i thought more about the rooms problem.

Still the best if you are able to create a csv file with your school administration software and import that. You will get best tables by that.

But if you have 100% filled students tables or you don't need the best table or if you want that several activities are at the same time, then you can use the workaround. The previous explained workaround have the problem, that the timetables don't look sweet. (it is not easy to to which rooms are locked. Even they are.)

I will explain the problem once again and then describe a workaround with "nice" timetables.

1. Problem:
You have a (or some) years with several classes. Maybe year 8 with class 8a, 8b, 8c and 8d.
The students must choose a religion course: Christian, Jew or Muslim
The students must choose a native language course: Native language for beginners or for experianced
The students must choose a foreign language course: Foreign language for beginners or for experienced
The students must choose a math course: Mathe for beginners or for experienced

So sadly you have to many courses to use the automatic divide year function. You also don't have a school administration software. So you want to use a workaround.

Workaround 1: Do it like i discriped in example 2. compare http://www.timetabling.de/manual/FET-manual.en.html#id_12

Workaround 2: if you already know that all religion courses must be at the same time, all native language courses must be at the same time, all foreign languages courses must be at the same time, all math courses must be at the same time, then do this:
- add year "8"
- add groups (classes) "8a", "8b", "8c", "8d"
- add subgroup "8a_sub" in group "8a"
- add subgroup "8b_sub" in group "8b"
- ...
- add groups (courses) in year "8".
  - so add groups "8 Christian", "8 Muslim", "8 Jews"
  - and add groups "8 native language for beginners", "8 native language for experienced"
  - add groups "8 foreign language for beginners", "8 native foreign for experienced"
  - add groups "8 math for beginners", "8 math for experienced"
- now add ONLY to the first courses the subgroups "8a_sub", "8b_sub", "8c_sub" and"8d_sub". So you must add that in "8 Christian", "8 native language for beginners",  "8 foreign language for beginners" and "8 math for beginners". All other courses don't get a subgroup.
- now you can add activities as normal
- BUT after adding activities, you need to connect the courses! So you need add a lot of constraint "A set of activities has same starting time (day+hour)". (But you save adding a lot of dummy activities and timetable will look sweeter.