A unique situation for scheduling peripatetic instrumental lessons

[murr]

Hello,

I work in a music department where we are tasked at the beginning of each term with the job of scheduling student's peripatetic instrumental music lessons for the coming term. At present this is done inhouse by us in the department and involves us manually cross-referencing each individual student's timetable to ensure their instrument lesson schedule meets various criteria.

The main constraint is that students aren't to miss the same lessons more than a certain number of times (I can detail what these are if it's helpful but it's generally not more than 2 science, English, maths not more than 1 of other subjects etc). Other considerations are things like, the school's calendar ie: avoiding certain events/school trips etc, coordinating rooming across 2 campuses (primary and secondary) and working around teacher's schedules but these are things I imagine this software will handle.

As you can imagine this process is extremely laborious and time consuming. It seems our method is archaic when I know it's something that can be computed by software much more easily and quickly but it's difficult to know how to go about doing this.

We already have the student's timetables that are presumably done by some other software system, and as I mentioned our job is only to draw up the instrumental lessons, working around already existing timetables. My query is, how would I use this software for this purpose? I would imagine it's a case of importing data (that is, the already existing student's timetables) and using the software to perform the task that we have been doing manually?

Apologies for quite a long winded post but our administrative predicament here is, i'm afraid, that complex! Let me know if there's any more I can clarify and thanks in advance for your help.

[Liviu Lalescu]

The main constraint is that students aren't to miss the same lessons more than a certain number of times (I can detail what these are if it's helpful but it's generally not more than 2 science, English, maths not more than 1 of other subjects etc).

I think it can be done. You know that in time slots T1..Tn the students St1 have English and you cannot allow the peripatetic music lessons to ovelap with more than two slots of English. So you add a constraint activities occupy max time slots from selection, activities = peripatetic music lessons of St1, slots = T1..Tn, max occupied = 2. (you only schedule the peripatetic music lessons).

Other considerations are things like, the school's calendar ie: avoiding certain events/school trips etc, coordinating rooming across 2 campuses (primary and secondary) and working around teacher's schedules but these are things I imagine this software will handle.

I think you refer to constraints students set not available, building changes constraints, and teachers' constraints. Please see what constraints are available in FET.

I would imagine it's a case of importing data (that is, the already existing student's timetables) and using the software to perform the task that we have been doing manually?

I am not sure you can import automatically the data, but you can add the constraints like in my first paragraph.

[barefoot]

OP could you please share your timetable?
i am in the exact same position in trying to create peripatetic music timetables