FAQ. Groups of students

[admin]

You always need to define classes despite of the fact they are groups or not. Defined classes should have a commom timetable so they will be also the groups if you have the division into groups. You have a few options to enter group of student into the system:

• Solution based on base classes. A group of students can be defined as the class which inherits the basic subjects from a base class e.g. the class Ia gr1 inherits all subjects from the class Ia. So you should define all basic subjects of class Ia and then additional subjects for every group e.g. Ia gr1, Ia gr2 and so on. You should select dependency during defining groups (Ia gr1, Ia gr2) with the base class (Ia) by selecting the base class in "Is the group of the following class" option. If the group have some subjects in common you can use combined subjects as well (see topic: "FAQ. Combined lessons" and the next point). The advantage of described division into groups is possibility to treat the groups and base classes in independent way and have, for example, no gaps in basic subjects and some in additional ones. Several parameters entered for classes can be treated in this way e.g. no gaps property, availability between lessons and days, min and max number of lessons, starting time etc.
• Combined subjects solution. The classes (groups) can have some lessons in common with other classes (groups). They are called the combined lessons and set during defining a subject (the subject can be combined with another one). For example the Math of a boys group can be defined to be the same lesson (the combined lesson) as the Math of a girls group.
• Trick solution. Sometime you do not need to use groups or combined lessons to get solution. In the case of the Physical Education or supplementary lessons which can appear on extreme positions better is not to define apart the groups of boys and girls because it is less efficient. You can enter the number of lessons on the subject Physical Education equal to the sum of the numbers for boys and girls. Then you set the subject to be on extreme position and not blocked and set a "common" teacher for the subject. After that you can decide if the particular lesson should be for boys or girls. If you have more gym rooms and a unique teacher for each group you do not need to define the subject to be on extreme position and not blocked and the number of lessons can be equal to real one because it will be possible to devide the groups between gyms.

The first one is recommended because is designed specially for it.

[admin]

I have decided to describe it once again because this aspect is the most important one.

Defining of a group depends on a kind of the group.

1) Groups within the student body (using "Is a group of the following student body")
It could be a lot of subdivisions of student body into groups :
- "Year I spanish for beginners" ("Is a group of the following student body": Year I)
- "Year I edvanced spanish " ("Is a group of the following student body": Year I)
- "Year I boys" ("Is a group of the following student body": Year I)
- "Year I girls" ("Is a group of the following student body": Year I)
- etc.

Each such subdivision can be independent from other one (e.g. students belongs only to one group) or dependent if students belong to several groups (e.g. "Year I girls" and "Year I spanish for beginners"). In the second case lessons should not overlap within groups. To achieve this you can assign the same student to both groups (here: "Year I girls" and "Year I spanish for beginners"). If we do not this the overlapping can appear because by default each students belongs only to one group. Of course, lessons for "Year I" and "Year I spanish for beginners" never overlap because both of them by definition contain the same students (property: "Is a group of the following student body").

2)  Groups within the whole school - courses, circles and optional lessons.
The courses are ordinal student bodies with defined subjects. You can assign students to them. If the same students belong to courses, lessons cannot overlap to let them attend for all classes.

Beside overlaping issues we can be in the necessary to combine or correlate some of them. What it means please see topic: FAQ. Combined lessons.

[admin]

In new version 3.0 devision students into groups is now much more easier (students' packets , automatic division).
Students' packets are the new preferred way for groups defining. One can aggregate several student bodies /courses/ into a new one /student body/.
See: User guide.