Messages

Hi Volker,

Thanks for the quick response and all your work on the software. Between my message and your response, FET generated a plan that looks really good and will probably be the one we use this year. Well done!

Back to the question at hand, I am open to using MAPR, but I honestly don't understand it. For example, when looking at the example file, why are there 5 versions of the same course? I generated a sample schedule with it and I really couldn't figure out how to make it work for me.

Here's an example of what I need:
All students are required to take a course called Theory of Knowledge (TOK). In the immediate year, there are 54 students and they need to be spread across three groups. One groups taught by me, the other two taught by another teacher. Each of use has their own availability to take into consideration as well.

I have already tried importing data via a CSV into FET and then set up proper rooms linked to the teacher... Up to that point I was optimistic. However, the students were not being grouped together - they were all over the place. I needed to limit them to three meetings, but I don't want to specify when those meetings will happen exactly - FET should optimize this.  I am afraid that if I placed the constraint that all activities had to have the same day/hour, then it would place them all into the same group, which is not what I wanted to happen at all.

Any tips on using MARP in this case would be useful.

As I write this, FET is generating a lovely timetable for my school. I have spent quite a bit of time on it and I am confident it's the best possible solution. Last year the headmaster tried to generate a schedule manually and simply couldn't - he was banging his head against the wall and couldn't even get to a basic plan, let alone to a good one. FET came to the rescue and this year we are only attempting with FET. The task has proven to be a difficult one this year, more on me, the human, rather than one FET, the computer.

I have a unique problem and I think that FET could solve it, but I can't find anything on the forums that would suggest anyone else has had this problem. A little background: my school offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, which is an international high school program for the last two years of secondary school. It's a great program, but creates lots of scheduling problems.

The program allows students to create their own individual path of learning. Each student selects their own courses from a range of categories. The end results is that some courses have only a few people while others have a lot of people and, as a result, need to be broken up into groups. This is where the program comes in: what is the optimal way of dividing up students across multiple course in the same subject? I believe the problem is similar to that faced by US high schools, so I tried to use the MAPR customization of FET, but 1) I just couldn't figure it out and 2) I am not convinced it's the same problem.

To better explain my problem....
I have around 110 students in the program that are in two different years. They don't share activities, but they share teachers. Each year takes courses in math, science, language, social sciences, etc. Some groups are small, for example French, around 10 people - there is no problem with these groups. However, some subjects are very popular, like Chemistry or Biology, and may have around 40 people who want to take them. These courses need to be divided into two separate courses taught by two different people or sometimes by the same person. There are also courses that everyone has to take, like English, and they need to be divided into 3-4 groups.

At the moment, I have to do "course planning" manually and assign the students as best as I think they should be assigned. (It involves a lot of spreadsheets and sorting.) However, what the optimal set up is depends on teacher availability and other courses. If I break up the groups the wrong way, it could make the job of FET very difficult. Sometimes it's just one person who is making a certain combination of courses impossible and if FET was "smarter" and move that single person to the other group, it would make everything much easier.

I have looked into using the MAPR customization of FET, but I can't figure it out. Perhaps there are some other strategies and tricks that can be used with the regular version of FET to solve this problem. I am open to suggestions and help. Also, I know Java and Javascript, so I believe I can contribute to solving the problem if extra code needs to be written for FET.

Thanks for the fantastic program and I hope to get some feedback soon :-)