activity with more than one possible teacher for a class/subject combination

[r.zaugg]

Hello

On our school it is possible, that there are many possible teachers could teach a class on a subject. If we have to define, which teacher teaches which class in which subject, this would be a very restrictive activity set in an early time.
Is there any possibility to define, that for class XY and subject Z, one of the teachers A,B or C is a valid option?

Best regards,
Roger

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello and welcome to the forum, Roger,

In the usual FET usage, each activity has a clearly specified (teacher, students set, subject).

However, we could use tricks to allocate activities with (students, subject) to a (teacher, day, hour). If this is not well solved by the official FET, I could customize FET for you.

You can see the custom versions AAT and AAP. I think AAT is more appropriate. If I remember correctly, it allocates activities (students, subject) to FET days = teachers and FET hours = real life time slots (day+hour). To specify that Z is only taught by A, B, or C, you could add a constraint activities preferred time slots, with allowed times only in the FET days A, B, and C, for instance.

Please let me know.

[r.zaugg]

Hi Liviu,

Thanks for your answer. Just to be sure:

In this AAT version: does I have to define the timeslot manually for this (student,subject) and (possible teachers) combination in your suggested way?
Or what are the consequences of this FET hours settings?

[Liviu Lalescu]

1) We could use FET official or a customization similar to FET-AAT. Not necessarily AAT, which was done to implement some requests of that user. But you could generate an example with FET-AAT, just to see what it does (I hope there is a file there in the examples directory).

2) You input the FET days = real teachers. Day_1=Teacher_1, ..., Day_n=Teacher_n. Then you input FET hours = real time slots. Hour_1=Monday_08:00, ..., Hour_30=Friday_13:00 (if I counted correctly). Then you input activities (students, subject), and their allowed FET time slots (real teacher and real time slot). Then you generate and FET allocates the activities to FET time slots (to real teachers and real time slots).

So FET will do the allocation. You just input the data. I hope I am not mistaking your question.

[r.zaugg]

ok, now I understand.

Thanks, I will try this out.

[r.zaugg]

This implies that I have to specify for each subject/class combination, when a teacher is available or not? I can no longer directly store a teacher's attendance time on a teacher, correct?

[Liviu Lalescu]

This implies that I have to specify for each subject/class combination, when a teacher is available or not? I can no longer directly store a teacher's attendance time on a teacher, correct?

The notion of a FET teacher will disappear, along with constraints for FET teachers.

Indeed, for each subject+students set, you will define a constraint activities preferred time slots.

Note: In the official FET, the maximum number of "days per week" is 35 and the maximum number of "hours per day" is 60. If you need more (if for instance you have 50 teachers or 80 real slots per week) you will need a customized version.

[r.zaugg]

Ok, thanks.
Have to think about it, perhaps this would end in more disadvantages than advantages. We have FET teacher constraints.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Have to think about it, perhaps this would end in more disadvantages than advantages. We have FET teacher constraints.

Not available constraints for teachers (times when they are present): I wanted to say that the constraints for real teachers will be transferred into constraints for FET activities. If for instance only teachers T1 or T2 can teach activity with subject S and students Y on Monday 8:00 and Tuesday 9:00, then you'll add preferred time slots for (S, Y), allowed times = FET times (days T1 and T2), (hours Monday 8:00 and Tuesday 9:00).

I did not think for instance to max gaps or min/max hours daily for teachers constraints.

[r.zaugg]

we use teacher constraints like "max days per week", "gaps per day" and "home rooms".

[r.zaugg]

that would be great in the activity dialog

and the algorithm tries to allocate the best one in combination with the other teacher constraints

[Liviu Lalescu]

we use teacher constraints like "max days per week", "gaps per day" and "home rooms".

Teacher max days per week, and teacher home rooms might be possible, maybe not so complicated, but anyway they (the constraints) need a careful implementation, different from the official FET.

Unfortunately, teacher max gaps per day seems difficult.

[Liviu Lalescu]

that would be great in the activity dialog

and the algorithm tries to allocate the best one in combination with the other teacher constraints

Yes, would be great, but I think internally for the algorithm it is impossible. There were more users suggesting this, unfortunately this is not how official FET was designed.

If all these three teachers and the three students sets they teach must be in the same time slot, you can select for an activity all these three teachers and the three students sets. But I assume it is not that easy?

[Liviu Lalescu]

There is also the FET-AAP custom version. In this version, Christoph Voelker works in two stages: the first stage (FET-AAP) allocates activities (with subject) to the teachers (as FET days) and students sets (as FET hours), so that the number of working hours for a teacher is met, and according to preferences, and the second stage (FET official) runs on the previous stage generated file.

[r.zaugg]

Many thanks for your answers.

I see. I have to do some concrete examples to decide, which option suits best for our cases.