I'm trying to generate an Exam schedule, to avoid exam scheduling clashes, ie when a student is programmed for 2 exams at the same time.
I detail some of my constraints below but what I'm struggling with is to find the right Year/Group/subgroup structure and how to use tag effectively.
Please help me clarify that. I will then be able to generate the necessary csv files to be imported in fet.
General constraints
- We have 2,200 students
- Students can taken any of the 300+ subjects (eg. MATH_102, BIO_307). I call them subject cohorts.
- Students usually have a common set of subjects (when pursuing same degree and concentration) but a few hundreds have a very specific set of subjects taken from the entire subject offer.
- A subjet cohort can have 3 to 300+ students. They are divided in subject sections of 30 to 50 students (eg. MATH_102_s1, MATH_102_s2 ... MATH_102_s7).
- Subject sections can be taught independently by different teachers at different times
- Professors are organized by College and Department
Exam constraints
- For teaching purposed we accept up to 50 students in a room but for Exam purpose the rooms capacities are reduced by 30%. A 50 seats room becomes a 35 seats exam room.
- All Subject sections of the same subject cohorts should have exam at the same time.
- All exam have a fixed duration of 2 hours.
- We have 5 consecutive days to place all exams.
- Every students should have a "pause" of at least 1 hour between his exams.
- Most students are in 5 or less subjects cohort but this can go up to 8 exceptionally. Meaning at most a student will seat for 8 exams, on per subject cohort.
- For proctoring, preference should be give to a professor of the same department, then of the same college if possible.
Where I am.
I've been playing with simple examples to understand the year/group/subgroup. I can make sens of it for colleges... eg with 4A, 4B, 4A-Bio, 4B-Bio, 4A-latin 4B-latin ect... but in my case I feel each student is his own subgroup, and then I need to deal with many group overlap, since I see a group a subject section or subject cohort
I am thinking of using the following structure:
Subject cohort / Subject section / Student ID
Subject section / Student ID (no subgroups). I have overlap. A student ID is obviously in several Subject section. Having it as a subgroup is not possible.
This would be generated by myself and would total less than 10000 lines. Would that be ok for FET ? Am I on the right track?
There are many things which I am not sure I understand.
However, I think I would go with the Official mode, adding each subgroup = a real student. You can create overlapping groups, by adding from the interface using the button "Add existing subgroup" in a group, with double click. Then export the structure as CSV and see it and replicate it.
Then, maybe add each activity for a student as having no teacher, you'll have 8 x 2200 activities, which is reasonable for FET. Then add also activities for the teachers (without students). Then, constrain the min/max occupied slots of the week for each subject (activities occupy min/max time slots from selection), then constrain min/max simultaneous in each time slot (activities min/max simultaneous in selected time slots).
I am not sure about the rooms. Take care that space constraints and rooms allocation are computational expensive; if you can avoid adding FET rooms, best.
Also, students max 2 hours consecutive 100%.
These are my ideas.