I'm wondering what the right way is to setup an activity and student groups/subgroups to do the following:
A course has 2 equal sized sections of 20 students each. So there are 40 students total. Each section meets once a day. How do I use fet to divide the 40 students into 2 sections. In the real situation there will be multiple courses so the split will have to depend on what other courses the students are taking (e.g. if they're taking the algebra class that meets in the 2nd period they can't make it to the first section of world history that also meets in that period, they will have to be scheduled for the second section of world history that meets in 4th period).
please read this:
http://www.timetabling.de/manual/FET-manual.en.html#id_12
Hi Volker,
Thanks for the response. I did look at that section before posting but was still confused (possibly due to the lack of a high school example). Perhaps, it would be better if I describe what I tried and you can point out what I did wrong.
I created two teachers t1 and t2. I created one student year 2012, with a single group g1 with 2 subgroups Joe and Bobby. I created a course, Algebra. I then created two activities both are setup with a student limit of 1, assigned group g1, and associated with the Algebra course. One activity has t1 as the teacher, the other has t2.
I expected when I generated the timetable, that the students from g1 would be split up into the 2 activities. What I wanted was for Joe to be assigned to the activity with t1 as teach and Bobby to the one with t2 (or vice versa). Instead, both students were assigned to both classes, which violates the student maximum of 1 per a class so I'm confused.
Thanks,
venkman
ah. ok. now i understand.
if you add a group, then all subgroubs are assigned.
so in your example you must assign a subgroub if you need only one student.
of course in real life you need more students in a single activity. normaly you don't add them by adding several subgroups to an activity. it is better to crate an group with all needed subgroups and add only that group to the activity.
the number of students is independet from the number of subgroups.
the number of students is only needed if you use a room constraints with students limits.
So I'm assuming each subgroup is a student. If I have a group with 40 students (i.e. 40 subgroups), how do I split them between two sections of a course? It seems like you have to know which students are going to be in which section before hand. Is that the case? or can FET figure out the correct placement given other constraints on the students/subgroups?
For instance, say I have 2 courses: History and Algebra. There are 40 students total. All students have to take History, but only 20 have to take Algebra. History has a size of 20 students per a section and has two sections. Algebra has a single section of 20 ppl. How can I get FET to figure out on it's own that the 20 students that are in Algebra need to be in the section of History that does not meet at the same time. In this example I could do it manually, but in real life the situation will be far more complex.
I tried setting up rooms with capacities of 20 each and set the History activity to use 40 students, but that caused an error (no suitable room for the activity). It seems that FET considers and activity and section to be equivalent.
Quote from: venkman on February 08, 2012, 05:56:06 PM
If I have a group with 40 students (i.e. 40 subgroups), how do I split them between two sections of a course? It seems like you have to know which students are going to be in which section before hand. Is that the case?
Yes, you must decide that manualy.
There's no chance that's high up on your feature request list is there? ;)
It's on the todo list (course planning / block planning), but it will take (a long) time, because we are coding (only) in our spare time.
I am not familiar with this feature, that is why I didn't consider it. Also, it is a different part from timetabling, so a course planning/block scheduling might not fit into FET, but may need a separate program.
oh, yes, my answer was to short. it is a planning problem and should be a "new" programm. (because several things must be coded different, even if the main part from the algorithm will be similar to the current one.)
(but nevertheless it is in the TODO; and like i said: it will take a long time)
Reviving an old topic: please see http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?topic=1633.0