Optimisation settings

You can make the following settings for standard optimisation in course scheduling:

Number of steps

You can set the number of optimisation steps from 1 to 9. A higher number is likely to lead to better results.

Class level

You can limit optimisation to a certain class level (year). This entry is especially useful if you have no or only a few courses which can be chosen by students in different class levels (years).

Please also read section ' Optimisation for several class levels (years) '.

Allow student clashes

Optimisation generally schedules courses in such a way that no two courses chosen by the same student are in the same cluster. The programme therefore tries to avoid creating student clashes.

Checking this box allows optimisation to allocate courses to clusters even if this causes student clashes. Students affected will have to change their choice, i.e. take other courses in order to achieve a practicable timetable. This allows you to specify a maximum total number of weekly periods for all clusters for the purpose of optimisation. The price for changing choices is the reduced total number periods/week of the clusters.

Maximum number of periods (all clusters)

If you allow student clashes, you can use this field to limit the maximum number of periods/week for all the clusters.

Note: Changing this value automatically

If you enter a number which is smaller than the maximum number of periods/week of a certain student, optimisation will increases the value accordingly.

Add courses to locked clusters

Locked clusters are not changed during optimisation. Checking this box allows optimisation to add courses to locked clusters.

Maximum number of periods (one cluster)

This field is used to enter an upper limit for the periods/week of one cluster. If you only have courses with 2 or 4 periods/week, it might be useful to create clusters with 2 periods/week.

Termwise optimisation of clusters

(only possible with multiple terms module if terms already exist)

Checking this box results in course that are not held together in a term not being scheduled in the same cluster. You can find additional information on termwise optimisationin the chapter of the same name at the end of this section.