Help with FET BP - trying to put different activities in same block

[samantha.goddard]

Hello Liviu, Volker, Darren et al,

Thank you so much for the new version of FET with the different modes. I love it! I am starting to use FET BP to build our Grade 12 and Grade 11 timetables, since we run a block schedule. So far, I have all my Grade 12 activities in and it's running well.

I'm using the help instructions of: Set of activities preferred starting time / Set of activities occupies Max slots / Max simultaneous from set in selected slots and the Teacher Activity tag for scheduling my activities against students' selections.

I would like to try to make certain classes run in the same blocks since students sometimes shift between these classes once the year starts (i.e. between IB Math A&A SL and Pre-Calculus 12) or because it will help me schedule the Middle School timetable (i.e. all the Language Acquisition 12 teachers in the same block, if possible).

I've been experimenting with 'A set of activities has same starting time (different days)' as well as limiting the preferred starting time for the activities to certain blocks but it hasn't really helped me so far.

Do you have any recommendations please for the best way to do this? Thank you so much! Samantha

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Samantha,

Thank you for the appreciation and feed-back!

About your inquiry, I am sorry, but I cannot personally offer free consultation on this.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello again, Samantha,

I am sorry, I am ready to give it a try on your data set. Could you send me your file and tell me which students/teachers should be in the same block?

If you have for instance activities A1 (S1), A2 (S2), A3 (S3), and A4 (S4), you can use a constraint activities occupy max time slots (A1, A2, A3, A4), select all slots, max occupied = 2, and a constraint min, similarly, and these 4 activities will end up in only two slots, each slot will have two activities.

Maybe a new constraint to say that some activities should occupy maximum n hours could be needed. But I would like to experiment firstly with your data.

[samantha.goddard]

Hi Liviu,

No need to apologise. I'm sorry for not making a donation before - to be honest, I was unaware of how much FET depended on donations and it hadn't occurred to me. Sorry - so thank you for raising this! I will make a personal donation and I had already been planning to ask my school to make a larger contribution, when I saw your requests last week on the forum. 

I'll come back to you about the activities at the same time: this is less of a priority than trying to make sure all the students get their options as far as possible. At the moment, I am trying to take as many activities as possible out of the overflow blocks (and struggling with this - maybe because our students have too many choices and we need some extra sections to make this possible).

I'll come back to you re the blocks taught together! Thank you, happy weekend, Samantha

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Samantha,

Thank you very much for your understanding and kind intentions!

Maybe you need to use the constraint "max total activities in selected time slots", adding all the activities and selecting the overflow blocks, in a progressive approach.

I will wait for your file which, if needed, will remain private. If you want, you can send it now, so I can have a look for improvements/mistakes.

[Darren McDonald]

I would like to try to make certain classes run in the same blocks since students sometimes shift between these classes once the year starts (i.e. between IB Math A&A SL and Pre-Calculus 12) or because it will help me schedule the Middle School timetable (i.e. all the Language Acquisition 12 teachers in the same block, if possible).

I've been experimenting with 'A set of activities has same starting time (different days)' as well as limiting the preferred starting time for the activities to certain blocks but it hasn't really helped me so far.

Do you have any recommendations please for the best way to do this? Thank you so much! Samantha

Hi Samantha, I haven't tried to do this myself (like you, our first priority is giving the students their selected courses), but it might help to select just a pair of activities from the two subjects (say, Bill's Math AA SL course and Ted's Math AI SL course) with this restriction (rather than a whole set of students' selections). You may already have done it this way, but this should allow for some students to get their selected courses, while still allowing others to appear in overflow blocks. As long as it's actually possible for Bill and Ted to take those courses in the same block, this will still allow the other students to appear in overflow blocks without violating the constraint.

(Also, a few extra overflow slots is generally helpful, particularly if you've got teachers teaching more than one subject, and you've made those subjects incompatible by not allowing their tags to overlap.)

[samantha.goddard]

Hi Darren,

Thanks so much for those tips - that's really helpful. I put together a couple of students as you suggested and it works well. Great tip - thanks! I've got 3 overflow blocks too.

I've got all my Grade 12s done (just 5 in overflow now with Provincial courses) and am onto Grade 11 now.

Thank you again because your tips from last year have helped lots too. I didn't dare use FET-BP last year because I hadn't used FET before but I'm finding it really great for block scheduling now. So much better than my manual timetabling of blocks last year!

Thanks and all the best, Samantha