The Offered Courses Table
This table lists all the courses which you intend to offer in this line dataset.
Columns
Course : The course code. Must match the "Code" column in the "DataEntry > Courses" screen.
Course name : The course name. If you change this, it'll be changed in "DataEntry > Courses" too.
#Classes : How many classes will you offer of this course?
#Students : This is a count of all the students who have requested this course as one of their main requests.
#Students per class : The number of students who have requested this course as one of their main requests, divided by the number of classes.
#Units : How many units is this course in terms of elective lines? If this number matches the 'units-per-line' column of "Lines > Datasets" then it's considered a full width course, taking up the full width of that elective line.
Lines : Ideally this field will be blank, but occasionally you have reason to place constraints on which elective lines a course can be placed in. The syntax is e.g. '4,5,6' if it's only allowed on lines 4, 5 or 6; or '4a,5a,5b' if it's only allowed on the first half of line 4 or the first or second half of line 5. A third example is 'b' meaning it can only go on the second half of any line. Obviously the sub-line constraints don't apply to full-width courses.
You can also specify e.g. "not 7".
Groups: Here you specify zero or more capital letters, which are used (a) to link this course to the 'Rules' table and (b) to narrow down the dropdown lists in the Ask Students (subject selection) form. The 'Rules' table is in the top right-hand corner of the screen. See below this article for instructions on using the 'Rules' table.
Constraints: This field combines 3 elements: vlink (vertical links), hlink (horizontal links) and coreq (co-requisites). Here are some examples:
vlink:10GEO
hlink:10HIS
coreq:12MAS
or combinining them with commas:
vlink:12ENA, coreq:12MAS.
- Co-requisite: Sometimes a student isn't allowed to take course A unless they also take course B. If there are these dependencies, then you specify them here, i.e. what other course is the student required to take. These dependencies are checked both when requesting students' choices and when generating a solution. If the co-requisite relationship works in both directions then you'll need to enter a value into both rows.
- Vertical link: Means this course is required to run in the same line as that other course. If either course has multiple classes then all those classes will be combined together in the block.
- Horizontal Link. Means the algorithm will arrange the classes of those courses horizontally, i.e. if one is on subline 'a' of a particular line, then the other will go into subline 'b'. If the courses have just one class each then the meaning is clear. If they have multiple classes, hopefully the same number, then they will be arranged in horizontal pairs.
Note that an you can also use the 'relationships' panel, i.e. the little table in the bottom right-hand side of the screen, to specify vertical or horizontal relationships between individual classes. This gives you fine-grained control, e.g. you can create pairs of linked classes that way.
Offline : Enter either 'Y' or leave it blank. 'Y' means this course will be offered off the timetable, e.g. in the early morning or late afternoon periods.
Offer to (yrs) : What year-levels will you offer this course to? Blank means "all year-levels in this elective dataset". Otherwise put a comma-separated list.
Offer to (streams) : What streams will you offer this course to? Blank means "all streams". Otherwise put a comma-separated list.