many teachers - many groups

[KK]

First of all, thanks for the program. It is really powerful.
I'm not familiar with FET so forgive me if this is obvious or I missed existing answer, but I try to find a way to define the following situation.
We have 12 groups of students (S1, S2, ..., S12) and 3 teachers (T1, T2, T3) for subject SU1 that can be hold in one of two rooms (R1 and R2).
Teachers are not assigned to any particular group, but we know that T1 has 6 groups, T2 has 4 groups and T3 has 2 groups (i.e. it doesn't matter which one of T1..3 will be assigned to the particular group). Very similar situation we have for many other activities.

This - I guess - makes all constrains much weaker and should let the algorithm to assign T(i) to S(j) by itself to find a (better) plan.

The question is how to define this in FET?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Krzysztof K. (KK)

[Volker Dirr]

Hallo

sorry, you can't do that.
you need define that yourself.

if you want to "help" the algorithm, then nearly always this is helpful:
do as many activities as possible with the same teacher<->students combination.

so if you already have an activity with teacher T1 and students S1, then it is useful to use this combination again. (it help the algorithm AND the teacher, because he don't need to learn "new" studnet names, because he already know them from the other activity.)


an other useful thing: Do not think only about helping the algorithm, you should also think about best choice for teachers.

example:
students S1 to S4 are in year 8.
students S5 to S8 are in year 9.
students S9 to S12 are in year 10.

So maybe give one teacher all activities (of a special subject) of the same year. So give maybe T1 the students S1 to S4.
advantage:
- he can better compare the accomplishment of the students of that year.
- he save a lot of homework, because he don't need to prepare many different lessons

but be warned, maybe it is a big disadvantage in year 10. maybe they must do a final test at the end of the year. So it is (too) much work for a single teacher and it will be better to have as many teacher in one year as possible.


an other imported thing is to think about the previous year. was that teacher already teaching that group? there are also advantages and disadvantages if it is always the same teacher. this is a pedagogic "problem" and can't solved by FET. i think it is very imported to think about it and define that. For example most schools i know keep the teacher<->students combination for 2 or 3 years. after that they change.

[Liviu Lalescu]

First of all, thanks for the program. It is really powerful.
I'm not familiar with FET so forgive me if this is obvious or I missed existing answer, but I try to find a way to define the following situation.
We have 12 groups of students (S1, S2, ..., S12) and 3 teachers (T1, T2, T3) for subject SU1 that can be hold in one of two rooms (R1 and R2).
Teachers are not assigned to any particular group, but we know that T1 has 6 groups, T2 has 4 groups and T3 has 2 groups (i.e. it doesn't matter which one of T1..3 will be assigned to the particular group). Very similar situation we have for many other activities.

This - I guess - makes all constrains much weaker and should let the algorithm to assign T(i) to S(j) by itself to find a (better) plan.

The question is how to define this in FET?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Krzysztof K. (KK)

In addition to Volker's answer:

In FET, you must specify the exact teachers and students for each activity, you cannot let FET choose them. I think this is called course planning and FET cannot do that.

I hope you can use FET as it is to solve your problem, by manually choosing your activities.

Please let us know.

[KK]

Thank You very much for the answer,
Of course I'll try to use FET to build the plan however I'm afraid that assigning teachers to students will lead to "impossible" plans (we have all 12 groups from the example  – and sometimes even more - on one year on one faculty). I can prepare a lot of input files with  combinations teachers and students but I've read all Your hints on forum and hoped that there is some trick for that. It doesn't change my opinion on FET – it is great and powerful program and whatever result I'll achieve I'll let You know.

Greetings,
Krzysztof K. (KK)

[Liviu Lalescu]

I thought some more about it. Say you have 12 groups, 3 teachers and 2 rooms. Then, maybe you could add 12 activities (1 for each group), with no teachers. Because you have 2 rooms only, at each moment you'll have only 2 activities simultaneously, so you'll have at each moment enough teachers. Then let FET allocate. Then decide yourself which activity gets which teacher.

This does not work if you have some not available times for each teacher, in different hours, or other teachers' constraints.

Might this work for you?

[KK]

Good idea. At first glance I think it works no matter how many rooms we have (but not more than available teachers). We only have to assume that a good plan is much more important for students than for teachers. With no teacher we will get an optimal plan for students and then we can assign teachers to already planned activities. Assuming the opposite (teachers more important) leads to activities without students – no problem in FET. Thank You very very much I'll try it, but please don't expect results quickly as we have (oh, my God) over 300 groups.

Greetings,
Krzysztof K. (KK)

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK, sure, please take your time!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Reviving an old topic: please see http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?topic=1633.0