Specifying subsets

The selection of courses that are to be scheduled simultaneously in partial optimisation is extremely important for the subsequent optimisation run. This is where you must use your experience and knowledge of your school to good effect in order to achieve a good result.

Course list

The course list displays all the courses of the currently active class level (year) that can be selected for partial optimisation. These are all the courses that still have open periods, i.e. periods that have not yet been scheduled in a cluster.

The "Per" column indicates the periods/week of the course and, in parentheses, the periods/week that have not yet been scheduled. The "Stud." indicates how many students have already been assigned to the course. The 'Level' column contains the class levels (years) for which each course id offered.

You can select courses for partial optimisation by checking the box in 'Sel.' column.

Note: No restriction

There is currently not restriction on the number of courses in partial optimisation. However, if a subset is selected that is too large, optimisation can take a very long time. You must also take care that your optimisation parameters do not contradict each other when selecting courses.

If, for example, a student has four course choices in a subset, but you wish to form a maximum of three clusters, it will as a matter of principle not be possible to achieve a result. In this case the error message 'Student has too many courses in subset' will be displayed.br>In order to avoid such discrepancies, helpful information is shown in the upper part of the window ‘Specifying subsets'.

In the example above the 5-period courses of class level 13 are selected, all in all 8 courses (first column, second row). These 8 courses will at least need 10 cluster periods (second column, second row). This shows that at least one student has chosen 2 courses of this selection. You can see this, because Untis notes that at least 2 clusters are necessary (third column, second row). If the selected courses can be scheduled in 2 clusters, then all clusters will be scheduled with students of class level 13. The fourth column, second row shows that 100% are scheduled (57 out of 57 students)

21 courses are still unscheduled (first column, third row).

Selection of alternative coursesn

All courses which can be selected as alternative courses also need to be included in partial optimisation. If student Oban, e.g. has the courses d1, d2 and d3 as alternative courses in his selection, these three courses can only be selected together.

Include clusters

Existing clusters are usually ignored in partial optimisation. However, it is possible to include existing clusters as the starting point for creating new clusters.

Clicking the button <Include clusters> displays a dialogue with list of available clusters. Here you can select the desired clusters and then include them in partial optimisation by clicking on <OK>.