In this view you can add a new course or modify an existing course. Courses are the core elements of Mimosa. With courses you define how to resources (or components) are synchronised together.
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.
If you have not created any components, the screen looks like the above. It is a common practice to create at least some of the components before you create courses, but Mimosa does not restrict to create courses without them. After you have created one or more components in components view, they will appear also in this screen. Note that each course must have at least one component, before it can be allocated to weeks (if you have several of them) and to be assigned into timetables.
Replace the suggested course code (CourseX) and course name. Input the maximum number of lectures (MAX) for this course (=the number of times this course will appear in the timetables). When you have created some courses, the screen looks like the one below:
If you have not assigned any components to courses, the column LINKS contains question marks. When there components are assigned to the courses, their number is shown instead.
When you have created some components and created a new course, the window which you use to you insert and edit courses displays the available components on the right and those which are selected for the course, on the left.
Click [Enter] to edit an existing course. If you have already selected components for this course, they are in the box on the left and on the right you see components that are selectable.
To add components to course, select the available component(s) on the right box and click Add button or double-click the component. If you want to add several components, keep [Ctrl] button down and select the components you want to add. 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:
After each of these selection techniques, click Add, Remove or Swap button to perform the task. If you accept the selections, click OK to close the view.
When you have assigned lectures into timetables, you can also view them by clicking Show schedule button on the bottom of the screen. The view expands and displays the timetable of the course and the active component on the left 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.
Displays detailed information of the latest selected course or component, its links to other codes and schedule information. See Show info for details.
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/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.
If at least one of the lectures has been assigned to timetables and the course is not locked, clicking this button reduces the number of lectures one by one, starting from the latest lecture and also adjusting the SUM and DONE fields accordingly. This enables then to decrease the MAX lectures, which is set to be at always larger or equal to SUM.
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 on the left box.
Collections are the core elements of your Mimosa file. With Mimosa you can add up to 240 components to each course, and within each institute there are various types of collections you may need to use. In a typical case course contains 3-5 components, but sometimes it can contain only one component, whereas in other cases it may contain tenths of components (individual timetables, meetings). When a course is assigned into a timetable slot, Mimosa requires that each of the components are available at the same time. For this reason collections cannot normally contain alternatives, since Mimosa assumes that they all must be free in the same time.
If you want to list components as "alternatives" (such as in student selections), you can in some case uncheck the option "Prevent conflicts for" in Options|Timetables. In this case Mimosa does not check the overlaps in timetables for these components.
The order of components the collections does not have any specific meaning for Mimosa, but the order that has selected here is also used when printing or publishing timetables on web. Therefore in case of collections which contain several teachers and rooms it is recommended to list them in the same order so that their interpretation is as simple as possible.
Note that the similar rules to combine several kind of resources for different courses (or projects, sessions) can be easily applied to other than educational environments, such as for conferences, staff and machines scheduling, theater and music rehearsals etc.
Examples of typical collections are presented below:
Example 1: Class, teacher and room
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.
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 on the right box.
Example 2: One class, two teachers and two rooms
In this example the class G107 is split into two sections for two teachers BEATTY and HACKMAN who teach their groups in rooms R112 and R206, respectively. Note that the order of components is a question of taste and readability.
Example 3: Two classes, teacher and room
It is also sometimes possible that one teacher has a session which contains students from two classes.
Example 4: Student-based or personalised courses
If you want to create individual timetables, the collections of the courses typically consist of one teacher, room and a set of students. In this case components do not contain any classes/groups, but a list of students which are associated to their courses as follows:
Example 5: Meetings of teachers
Meetings of teachers can also be scheduled as special courses, and in this case courses typically contain one room plus the list of teachers attending the meeting.
Similarly, you can create all courses for your institution. In most cases courses consist of a class, teacher and room, but there are limitless of 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:
The structure of the collections you define for courses in this way are always special cases of the above matrix, which often contain only one row or column and in most (and simplest) cases, it contains only one row and one column (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 (by default) not checked for conflicts, 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.