How do I organise students into classes for one teacher?

[kirstyjay]

Hi there,

I am a teacher who has one classroom and I do small groups of private classes in English. So, basically there's just me as a teacher and one classroom, with one subject  - but what I need to organise are the students so that they are arranged in the correct ability group on a day and at a time that does not clash with their other activities.

I will have no more than 4 students in a class. Some come once a week, some twice, so I need to specify this.

Class levels are : infant, primary 1, primary 2, primary 3, ESO, Bachillerato, Adult 1, Adult 2, Adult 3.

Classes are from Monday to Friday, 15:00h to 20:00h.

I could do with some help with how I would enter the data in order to do this task?

Any help greatly appreciated, as I'm having trouble getting my head around it. 

[Volker Dirr]

that depends on the other activities.

in the easiest case simply place the class as students set. so the generated the activities can be placed correct. they just look a bit to "big", because it look like you must theach the whole class.

are there other teacher doing the same? in the easiest way simply place this teacher into the same activity.
but it might be better to split the year automaticly. (see http://www.timetabling.de/manual/FET-manual.en.html#id_12 )

[kirstyjay]

There are no other activiites. I don't want to do anything complicated, just organise the children into classes. Maximum 4 to a class, but specify any time constraints each student has so they are put in the best group at the best time slot.

If it helps, here is my current timetable. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AoLG45BEwpDCdGxLN0tlc3JjNnl6aGlGVVhENDd3cFE&single=true&gid=6&output=html

It's not correct, as parents have been coming to me saying 'My child has swimming at that time', 'I want both my children to come in the same class, or adjacent classes', etc etc.

I need to have the students arranged into the correct ability group and specify times they CAN'T do, so that the program comes up with the best fit for everyone.

There is only one subject - English. Only one activity - English. Only one teacher - Me. Only one space - My classroom.

I know that maybe I should be inputting the students' names as subgroups maybe...

I'm reading the manual right now, and have been all morning. I just can't figure out how I should put in this data to make it work for the task. It's only a one-off timetable I need, as it'll be the same each week.

Thanks for helping

[Liviu Lalescu]

I did not understand exactly your timetable, but I can tell you this: in FET you need to specify the exact teachers and students for each activity, then FET places them in time and space (rooms).

But you can use tricks to assign students to activities: consider real students = FET rooms or real students = FET time slots, then allocate activities to time slots or to rooms.

[Volker Dirr]

ok. i see. a "1-man-school".

it is possible, but a bit complicated to enter.

i will describe 3 variants:

1. variant: easy to understand
2. variant: improvement of variant 1
3. variant: improvement of variant 2, but currently not possible because needed constraint doesn't exist

what all variant need:
- enter normal days and hours (fet->data->time)
- do NOT enter a teacher in all variants. it doesn't work if you enter a teacher. all constraints "automaticly" related to you, the only teacher.
- add students not available time constraints to care about not available times (of course after you added students, so variant 1 to 3).
- add 4 rooms. call them "Chair 1" to "Chair 4" (So "rooms" are chairs, seats, places, ...)
- add subject "English"
- add room constraint subject preferred roomS and add all 4 rooms to subject English.


variant 1:
add all student names as year
add to each student an activity (set 100% min n day weight)

now you can already generate and get max 4 students per timeslot.
the currently problem is, that students with different "english levels" are in one timeslot.
you can solve it by adding A LOT of "activities not overlapping" time constraints.
so you need to take each activity and add each activity (student) that is not allowed to be placed at the same time (because of an other English level)


variant 2:
add the english levels as "years".
add the students as "groups" into to correct "year" (english level)

now you can use a shortcut while adding the activities:
if there are max 4 students in a "year", then you can simply add the whole "year" as an activity.
don't do this if there are 5 or more students in a "year", it will give you "incorrect" solution.

again you need to add "not overlapping" time constraints. this time not as many as in variant 1, but still a lot.


variant 3:
set students like in variant 2.
add the (shared) English levels as "activity tags".
add activities like in variant 2, but also add the correct activity tag.

now you need to enter a time constraint "Max 1 different activity per time slot".
read. you can generate.

sadly that constraint doesn't exist at the moment.

i think we might add this in the TODO:
code a time constraint "Max X different activity per time slot", because this x version can be also used if there are 2 teachers at the school (if they teach both the same subjects)