Time constraints for teachers

[math]

Hi!

Due to the Corona pandemic our university is closed for the public at the moment, so that e-teaching is widely used. Even though we're now starting to open up again, we are strongly urged to continue with e-teaching wherever possible. So we will have a mix of regular courses (held at university campus) and video conferences (not requiring any rooms inside our university) in the next semester. Modeling this scenario inside FET seems to be easy.

However there's one thing where I don't have an idea on how to model it: time constraints for teachers

The most important constraint is "teacher available times". Using this constraint I can define when the teacher is available at the university, so that lectures are planned in these time slots. But now I have two different available times:

• available times at university campus
• available times for e-teaching activities

These two categories really make a difference, because many of our teachers live in remote cities, being available at campus for only two or three days per week. Regular activities have to be planned to these days. e-teaching activities however may also be planned to other days, because the teacher may work from home (but maybe only in the afternoon).

Is there any way in modeling this in FET?

Or is it at least possible to define that time constraints shall be ignored for specific activities?

Best,
Matthias

[Liviu Lalescu]

I think you can add activity tags to the activities of teachers: University or Home. And add two constraints activities preferred time slots with 100% for each teacher with the corresponding tag. 

This constraint (activities preferred time slots) will count the gaps in these slots. So you might want to add a constraint teacher not available for each teacher, or allow more gaps for these teachers.

[math]

I don't think that your approach will solve my problem because I can still have a single list of availability times per teacher only. However, I would need two of them: availablity times for teaching at university premises and availability times for teaching from home.

Meanwhile I think that adding multiple teachers might be the best solution. This way I might have "Teacher A (eLearning)" for all e-learning activities of that teacher and "Teacher A" for all on-campus activities.

This might however lead to a situation where "Teacher A (eLearning)" and "Teacher A" are scheduled in parallel. I did not check if there's a way to prevent such a situation.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Both ways work. I prefer my way, because you can control the gaps of the teachers and min/max hours daily and other things.

So, input not available teacher as a constraint activities preferred time slots    (or two).

Or for your case, activities not overlapping.