course selection

Hi, Can somebody tell me on how timetabling engine work? after the students requested for the selected courses and approved. The timetabling supposed to generate a best-fit timetable for the student right? But after I clicked run nothing happened. I’m quite confused here! Thanks

Hi manut,
I’m also new to gibbon but my understanding is that gibbon does not provide a timetable solver. It provides a very flexible and powerful way to display timetables but I think you have to create your timetable in a different program like fet.
After that you can (re-)create your timetable in gibbon to enable your students and teachers to see it.

In my school the students are not allowed to choose their courses by themselves, so probably you could elaborate on your process to create a timetable until now and how you think it should work in gibbon.

Also: Where did you click “run”?

best wishes,

Paul

Hi manut, sounds like you’re using the Course Selection module. In this case, the module doesn’t build the timetable itself, you will still need to create and enter a timetable into Gibbon. What the timetabling engine does is look at all the available classes for each course a student has selected, and find the best set of classes for that student to take that doesn’t conflict with other classes.

For example, in large schools, a single Math course may have a few different classes, say Math.1 on Mondays P1, Math.2 on Wednesdays P3, etc. If a student was taking an Art course that only had one class Wednesdays P3, then this would create a conflict, so the student would need to take the Math.1 on Mondays P1 for their timetable to work. The engine runs these types of calculations for all possible combinations of classes that a student could take, to find the best timetable for that student. It returns these results after you “Run” the engine, which allows you to preview the results and possibly make changes to classes/run the engine again to find better times for classes with lots of conflicts. Then, when everything looks good, you can “Go Live” which turns all the student course selections into class enrolments for the target year.

Hope this helps explain what the timetabling part of the module is doing : )

Hi Paul, the button “run” I clicked is located in timetabling engine in course selection module.

Hi Sandra, but after I “Run” the timetabling engine there was no result and where I can " Go Live"? thanks!

Hi manut, you need the students to make their course selections first and also have a fully setup timetable ready to use, the timetabling engine should give you a number of warnings if there is not enough data to work with.