In this window you can add a new course or modify an existing course.
When starting to create a new file and you do not have created any courses, you input here only the Code, Name, Category and MAX for each course. After one or more components have been created you can attach them to courses in a similar manner as you can do in components view. Note that these both views are very similar in their functionality. Mimosa checks that the permissible links of courses and components are always valid, by showing on the right box only those components that can be added.
Before lectures have been assigned to timetables, all combinations of courses and components are valid. When lectures are assigned into timetables, the available component selection on the right box will become smaller and decreases the possibilities. It is of course possible to create courses that contain only some of the components, schedule the courses, and add the remaining components afterwards.
The goal in this view is to create courses and select the right components for them:
Click [Insert] to create a new course or [Enter] to edit an existing course. In both cases, the window below is displayed:
To add components to course, select the available component(s) on the right box and click Add button or double-click the component. In a similar way, you can remove selected components from the left box or Swap components across boxes. You can continue this process also after creating timetables, since Mimosa takes care that overlaps cannot occur and lists only those items on the right box which are currently available and will not create conflicts.
Techniques for selection of items from the list box:
Code
Enter a new code (with maximum length of 15 characters) here for the course you are going to create or modify the old code if it has already been created. When inserting a new course, Mimosa fills the field initially. Replace it with your own code, which describes its content. Also take into account that you may want to use this code later on as sorting criteria.
Name
You can add to each course a descriptive course name (with maximum length of 63 characters).
You can enclose in brackets [ ... ], ( ... ), [ ... ] ,\ ... \ or / ... / those texts you do not want to show in reports and on the screen, but are helpful when working with data. For instance, you can include hidden personal comments or price information (such as Smith [demanding person!] or Language studio [rent costs $70/h]). See Options|Other|Hidden text separators.
The capacity of the course can be inserted in this field by using the special character # followed by the number, such as #30, and it can be enclosed in brackets as described above. You can define the capacity in similar manner for components, and when the limit is exceeded (by comparing the capacities of courses and components), you are alerted. Input the number immediately after the # character (such as English #30 or Laboratory [#25]).
For courses and rooms, this number represents the upper limit of students allowing to participate (capacity). For other components than rooms it represents the demand or requirements (group size). Since courses may contain several components, the sums of these two are compared. A warning is displayed, if
a) The course capacity is larger than the capacity of rooms or
b) The requirements of other components is larger than the capacity of room(s) or
c) The requirements of other components than room(s) is larger than the course capacity.
Category
Because of the different needs of the institutions that use this software, the default types of the courses are given here only as examples, but they should be redefined in Options|Categories to suit your needs.
MAX
This is the total number of lectures planned to be allocated over weeks for this course and later timetabled.
SUM
The total number of allocated lectures of this course (SUM<=MAX). The value in this field is automatically updated by the application in the Weeks view and cannot be changed here.
DONE
The total number of timetabled lectures of this course (DONE<=SUM). The value in this field is automatically updated by the application in the Timetables view and cannot be changed here.
LINKS
The total number of components included in this course or the size of the collection. This number is automatically changed when you change the size of the code list on the bottom left in this window.
Copies the selected codes from the
left list onto the Clipboard.
Pastes the selection from the Clipboard to the
left list.
Cuts (copies and removes) the selection from the
left list onto the Clipboard.
You can use the above three functions to copy and move course components across two or more courses. Once you have select the Copy or Cut operation, you can select another course and then select Paste to copy/move the stored components to this course.
Click it to enable/disable only the currently activated category to be displayed on the right
box. This option is often useful to limit your search to a specified set of the code list.
Jumps to Tools|Show timetables.
Displays a window of all conflicting components for all courses, with the current course activated. See Tools|Modify collections.
Change the previous course as the active course, without using the Ok or Cancel buttons. If some of the fields have been changed, you are prompted to accept the changes before moving to the previous course.
Change the next course as the active course, without using the Ok or Cancel buttons. If some of the fields have been changed, you are prompted to accept the changes before moving to the next course.
You can change the selected fields that are displayed in the lists on the left and right. If too many fields are displayed, only a part of the component name is shown.
Components are added to the active course by picking them from the list of All addable components on the right. You can add the components one by one by clicking them with the mouse or select several components at once by simultaneously pressing the Shift or Ctrl keys with the mouse. Press Add to add selected components.
Components are removed from the course collection by selecting them from the list on the left and then pressing Remove.
You can also simply Swap two selected components from both lists and combine clicking of Add and Remove buttons.
If you want to remove all components from the left box, click Clear
All.
Sort sorts all components in the course collection in the order of code and category number.
Select All selects all components of the course.
Erase removes the
timetabled lectures of this course from the selected weeks, thus allowing new components to be added to the course collection.
Moves the active component up or down within the course collection (arrows on
bottom of the window).
Examples of courses:
Suppose that the class LineA must study three hours in a week the course called Nursing of People at Different Ages, taught by NICHOLSON in room R112. We call use the abbreviation NURSING for that course and go to the selection Edit|Insert to create it. As with components, you associate a unique code of at most 15 characters, a descriptive name of at most 63 characters and select the appropriate category from the list available categories:
(The Category field is not as significant with courses as with components, but often it is useful in sorting and selections.)
Use the Add button in that window to move the selected components from the right-hand list (green) to the left-hand list (blue), and Remove button to do the reverse operation. You can pick several components at once by keeping the [Ctrl] button pressed while clicking the components to select.
Components of this course (3):
All addable components (10):
With a similar procedure you can create all courses of your school, and in most cases courses consist of a class, teacher and room, but there are other combinations. If the teacher is required to teach pupils from two classes simultaneously, both classes are added to the left-hand list. Below are examples of different types of course collections:
Note that when course structure varies across lectures, it must be split into two or more courses:
The most common way to define those set of mixed courses containing several teachers and classes is to include all classes (C1,C2,C3,C4), teachers (T1,T2,T3) and rooms (R1,R2,R3) in the same course. The application neither knows nor cares which one of the pupils is attending the lectures of each teacher. The course, when defined in this way, always keeps all classes (and other components) occupied at the same time, and the list of components is: C1, C2, C3, C4, T1, T2, T3, R1, R2, R3.
The order of the components is not relevant, you could also list them as C1, C2, C3, C4, T1, R1, T2, R2, T3, R3 to emphasize in timetables where each teacher is located.
Note that when there are two or more classes and teachers that should be connected together, it helps to view the setting in a form of a table as follows:
Note that the structures of the collections you define for courses are always special cases of the above 4x3 matrix. In most cases, in this matrix there is only one row and one column (one teacher, class and room).
Using of subjects as components in courses is basically descriptive and voluntary, and recommended in mixed courses as the one below. If the course structure is simple, the course name is often used instead to describe the course content. Adding a set of subjects (S1,S2,S3) to the course tells the readers of the timetable, what the teachers are doing with their sets of students (coming from several classes). The subjects can also be used as comments and for statistical reasons to count the sums of lectures of different types. By default, subjects are not (naturally) conflict-checked, which enables several instructors to teach the same subject simultaneously (in schools with several teachers of the subject Mathematics, for instance).
When you add the subjects to the course collection, you can insert them where the corresponding teachers and rooms are, to make them more readable in printouts. Below are samples from some typical layouts:
Use the arrow keys to move the component up or down on the list to get the desired result. The same order is used when timetables are printed.