Hi,
I'm helping an admin organize a timetable for the staff members of an Elementary school. I have come across your program recently and am in the process of learning how to do certain things.
I have set activities for students and teachers and now I'm stuck a bit.
The issue is how to organize the actual teaching time of each teacher.
The school works in the following way. Each group of students has a homeroom. This homeroom is where they spend their entire school day except when they leave for special classes like Gym/Science/Computers (other activities basically).
Now the regular teachers' schedule depends on what activities the kids have during the day.
So for example the teacher in charge of homeroom 10 (Kindergarten Group 1) has this group from 8:05 till 3:30 except when the group has Lunch or science class with another teacher.
How can I add this in so as to have the homeroom teachers schedule indicate that the group of students they have has an activity in another room?
The next step is to add the fact that certain groups switch homerooms although this can be solved manually.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Why not this: Add home room activities as usual, space constraints home rooms for their teachers, and the other special rooms activities will have a preferred room?
Maybe you can describe why the above does not work, and give a small illustrated example.
Hi,
Thanks for the prompt reply.
The issue is that the Homeroom, activities are not organized by the admin, but by the teachers and I have very little knowledge of what each teacher will plan.
My understanding is that the specialized teachers (Gym, Computers, Science) get priority and then what's left over belongs to the regular Homeroom teacher.
So I'm in essence looking for a way to create an activity that fills in whatever gaps are made by the special classes.
Does that make sense?
I have attached a sample schedule from the previous year.
You mean in the picture you know the non-blank slots, and you need to fill in the blank cells? Then add for each non-blank slot a not available students constraint.
Or, otherwise, what signifies the empty cells in your picture?
ah yes, the blank slots are the teacher's class time when they have their homeroom.
The slots that have Sci Tech, HS/LA, Phy Educ are classes taught by specialists and during those periods the Homeroom teacher has a spare.
The reason why the Homeroom schedule keeps track of the other special classes is that certain preparations must be made before the students leave the homeroom and go to their sci or gym class. In the case of gym they have to change uniform. For science they have to bring different books/tools, etc
I am sorry, but I think I still do not understand correctly, because for me it seems very simple: add the activities, add some constraints activity preferred starting time for the locked activities, and generate.
Also, you might need to use the constraints activities not overlapping (but I am not sure).
Maybe you would like also to send your .fet file, so I can have a look.
You have also some building constraints, like min gaps between building changes. You could add each room to a different building and use this constraint, so that pupils have one slot between changes of buildings.
The issue is that I have a homeroom teacher who on their schedule must be told during which time slots the group they have goes to a special class.
Unless i look at the student schedule which has that information without any extra hassle. I think I understood what you meant. Add the activities for the specialists and then generate. Yes, you're right it is simple. I'll give it a go and post back as soon as I have something (which might be tomorrow or in a few weeks/months depending on the scheduling of all those involved)
Thank you Sir.
P.S.
For the .fet file I'm a bit resilient since I feel I would need Admin approval. I will check tomorrow.
P.P.S
Thanks, in a more general manner, for taking the time to make the program. It's brilliant.
Quote from: CCU on June 28, 2015, 09:33:58 PM
The issue is that I have a homeroom teacher who on their schedule must be told during which time slots the group they have goes to a special class.
Those slots will be free for that teacher. Or you could add for each special activity of that students set an activity for the teacher, with the same subject, and make them start at the same time with constraints activities same starting times.
Quote
Unless i look at the student schedule which has that information without any extra hassle. I think I understood what you meant. Add the activities for the specialists and then generate. Yes, you're right it is simple. I'll give it a go and post back as soon as I have something (which might be tomorrow or in a few weeks/months depending on the scheduling of all those involved)
Thank you Sir.
P.S.
For the .fet file I'm a bit resilient since I feel I would need Admin approval. I will check tomorrow.
P.P.S
Thanks, in a more general manner, for taking the time to make the program. It's brilliant.
Please call me Liviu :)
Of course, I understand and respect the privacy problems. You can also send the file to my email.
Thank you for the appreciation!
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on June 28, 2015, 09:43:06 PM
Quote
Thank you Sir.
Please call me Liviu :)
Force of habit (professional and upbringing "cei sapte ani de acasa")
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on June 28, 2015, 09:43:06 PM
Of course, I understand and respect the privacy problems. You can also send the file to my email.
You represent a third party, separate from the institution that I work for so any correspondence has to be Admin approved from my perspective. I'll speak with my VP and see if they agree.
I'm really excited because if this works it solves a lot of problems that used to take a lot of time and that were usually solved by one individual that did all of this by hand (not me, a fellow colleague).
Cheers,
CCU
Quote from: CCU on June 28, 2015, 09:58:21 PM
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on June 28, 2015, 09:43:06 PM
Quote
Thank you Sir.
Please call me Liviu :)
Force of habit (professional and upbringing "cei sapte ani de acasa")
:)
Quote
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on June 28, 2015, 09:43:06 PM
Of course, I understand and respect the privacy problems. You can also send the file to my email.
You represent a third party, separate from the institution that I work for so any correspondence has to be Admin approved from my perspective. I'll speak with my VP and see if they agree.
I'm really excited because if this works it solves a lot of problems that used to take a lot of time and that were usually solved by one individual that did all of this by hand (not me, a fellow colleague).
Cheers,
CCU
Sure. Let's hope it works.
Hi,
Ok, back with a few questions regarding a restriction that blocks the generation of a viable time table.
My constraints are.
Weekdays run from 8:05 to 15:30 except for Mo, We and Th when the day finishes at 2:30
There are homerooms each day at 8:05-8:15 and 12:55-13:00.
Recess is at 10:00 to 10:15 and lunch is 12:00 to 12:55.
Now I introduced the above in the form of activities with multiple splits and set preferred time slots for each one.
When generating at this point I get no errors and it all takes less than a second.
Once I add the following it all stumbles.
I have 3 grades with 2 groups each with an activity that occurs twice a week. The issue is that I must have one group follow another. What I mean is that if the Grade 4 (Group 1) are taught on a certain day, then right after that course I must have Grade 4 (Group 2)
So I tried setting-up the activity as follows:
Activity grade 4 group 1 science, 2 splits with minimum one day in-between splits.
Activity grade 4 group 2 science, 2 splits......
Now I do this for all 3 grades concerned and then I set the added constraint of consecutive classes for each of them. At this point FET no longer generates a table and justs keeps running without finding a viable solution.
I not sure if my approach is wrong.
I still have constraints to add so I'm stuck on how to proceed.
All suggestions are welcomed.
Thank you.
P.S. I'm tied up at the moment so the earliest I will be able to reply will most likely be after 2-3 hours from now.
You did correctly.
I would try to deactivate the consecutive constraints and see if it still generates, then deactivate the min days between activities constraints and see if it still generates (one try at a time).
The best would be to send me your file (if possible).
I'll try as soon as I get a chance to get home. I should post back with the results in the next hour and a half.
Thanks
Ok, I spotted the issue but that makes things worse now.
The problem is the breaks: Recess, Lunch and the Short days.
Each one of the groups must have 1 hour of class which means two groups back to back makes 2 hours which is not possible unless they are scheduled before and after recess.
The issue is that FET does not see recess as a break but as an activity (since I defined it as such as I have to have it show up on the schedule as recess not an X) so using the special option of having one course be consecutive to another is not feasible.
So I can either remove recess and leave it as a series of x's which will then facilitate FET's job or try to define a convoluted constraint scheme.
Is there a way for me to have the generated schedules exported in an editable format such as xcl, doc, odt?
If I can do that then things become easy and I have fewer constraints to contend with.
On a side note, is the consecutive course option interchangeable? By that I mean, is it possible to have A then B or B then A?
Edit:
I just realized my last question is pointless since you have the Group function which does exactly what I was looking for.
Quote from: CCU on July 28, 2015, 10:37:34 PM
Is there a way for me to have the generated schedules exported in an editable format such as xcl, doc, odt?
If I can do that then things become easy and I have fewer constraints to contend with.
Not directly. You could open the HTML timetables with Open Office or Libre Office or Microsoft Office. Or export from FET the timetable as CSV.
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 06:01:58 AM
Not directly. You could open the HTML timetables with Open Office or Libre Office or Microsoft Office. Or export from FET the timetable as CSV.
Hmh.... I see the CSV option in export but not the HTML. My version of FET is 5.18. (default for Kubuntu 14.04). Am I missing something?
On that note, is there a way to group 4 activities (2 to 3 splits each)? I have to do this 3 times so I'm a bit stuck. I could do Group A1, A2, A3 and then order A3 and A4 but it's not a flexible solution. Any ideas?
Thanks
html results are always stored automatic as soon as you generate a timetable in your "fet-results" folder. It should be in your home directory.
Quote from: Volker Dirr on July 29, 2015, 12:37:26 PM
html results are always stored automatic as soon as you generate a timetable in your "fet-results" folder. It should be in your home directory.
Thank you for the prompt reply. Any idea with the 4 activity grouping?
hmmm... i can't see a good solution for your group problem at the moment. Maybe i got an idea if you tell us why you need to group them. Thinking about that might give an other better ideas. (maybe you want to group them, because students and teachers don't need to run so much. in that case maybe using a buildings constraints might solve your problem.)
Quote from: CCU on July 29, 2015, 12:33:41 PM
On that note, is there a way to group 4 activities (2 to 3 splits each)? I have to do this 3 times so I'm a bit stuck. I could do Group A1, A2, A3 and then order A3 and A4 but it's not a flexible solution. Any ideas?
I don't understand. You need constraint four activities grouped? Maybe you could make these four activities start in the same day - constraint activities same starting day - this would be enough?
It's a bit of a limitation. There are 4 groups of students that have the same level. When these students have Sci they must each have the class one after another. The same is repeated for Sport and other special classes. The order in which the groups have the class is not important that's why I used the Grouping option.
I thought of a trick: add a dummy teacher, add it to each of the four activities, and max gaps for this teacher = 0.
That makes sense. I'll give it a go and post back in a few hours... Thanks again. ;D
oh.. nice trick! (But i must admit that i don't understand why this constraint is needed by CCU.)
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 12:55:11 PM
I thought of a trick: add a dummy teacher, add it to each of the four activities, and max gaps for this teacher = 0.
Don't forget the activities same starting day.
Quote from: Volker Dirr on July 29, 2015, 12:59:49 PM
oh.. nice trick! (But i must admit that i don't understand why this constraint is needed by CCU.)
The reason is that for teachers working with many levels/grades, it is customary to set up the groups in such a way so as to avoid having too many level switches in the same day. So if you teach science and you have Grade 1 Group 1 then you want to have Group 2 and 3 of the same level right after, because that way you are not force to change your activity every 30 minute block. So you save time on prep. If you had different levels every period then you would have to set up an activity for grade 4 group 1 for example, then take it down when another grade came in, then put it up again if grade 4 group 2 came in after that.
So it meant to save prep time.
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 01:01:38 PM
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 12:55:11 PM
I thought of a trick: add a dummy teacher, add it to each of the four activities, and max gaps for this teacher = 0.
Don't forget the activities same starting day.
I didn't add this constraint and so far the generated schedule looks good. I'll see how it changes once I add some of the other constraints. I want to avoid using too many constraints.
Thank you both for continuing to help.
Quote from: CCU on July 29, 2015, 06:32:05 PM
The reason is that for teachers working with many levels/grades, it is customary to set up the groups in such a way so as to avoid having too many level switches in the same day. So if you teach science and you have Grade 1 Group 1 then you want to have Group 2 and 3 of the same level right after, because that way you are not force to change your activity every 30 minute block. So you save time on prep. If you had different levels every period then you would have to set up an activity for grade 4 group 1 for example, then take it down when another grade came in, then put it up again if grade 4 group 2 came in after that.
So it meant to save prep time.
Maybe you could also use constraints max building changes per day. Maybe combined with same starting day, again.
Quote
I didn't add this constraint and so far the generated schedule looks good. I'll see how it changes once I add some of the other constraints. I want to avoid using too many constraints.
The activities might end up in different days.
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 06:38:24 PM
Maybe you could also use constraints max building changes per day. Maybe combined with same starting day, again.
The teachers stay in the same room, the students move around. and I can't put a limit of classroom changes on students yet since I have yet to input all the constraints given. It's a learning process for me on two counts: making a complex schedule as well as using your program (i don't think I thanked you enough for that...)
Quote from: Liviu Lalescu on July 29, 2015, 06:38:24 PM
The activities might end up in different days.
I know but I now want and need to give a bit of flexibility if possible. If two groups are on one day and the others are on another day then that is fine if it helps alleviate potential issues in other places. I am adding constraints and checking each time to make sure things work. As I do so FET spots potential issues and I try to fix them. Since there are still a lot more things to add I'm no longer eager to block these activities together at this moment. If after adding all the constraints together I have a bit of room to wiggle then I'll do so. :-\
And with that, if you are still up, have a good night, and if you read this in the morning have a good morning. ;D
Ah. Ok. I see. (I also understand your constraint request now.) You are doing a good approach. (I guess/hope you only use 100% weights at the moment, because bugs are easier to spot then.)
Quote from: CCU on July 29, 2015, 09:06:58 PM
And with that, if you are still up, have a good night, and if you read this in the morning have a good morning. ;D
Thank you! It was a morning :)
Success. 8)
I finished adding all the constraints and FET generated a schedule in seconds. Its under review right now but it looks promising.
Thank you both. ;D
Good :)