Courses view

Mimosa views:

Components view	Courses view	Weeks view	Timetables view

In this view you can do the following:

Create, edit and remove courses
Connect components to courses
View the list of courses and their components
Copy courses to and from Mimosa via the Clipboard

Recommended prerequisites:

You have created some components in Components view

Courses are typically sequences of events that require two or more components to be present at specific times in the timetable though, in their simplest form, they may also be used to schedule a single event for a single component. In schools and universities, courses are typically sets of lectures on a particular subject that require the presence of a teacher, a group of students and a room but they may also be used to schedule exams, meetings, planned absences or any other events requiring one or several components.

The course definition indicates how many events (occurrences of the course) need to be scheduled in the timetable. Mimosa will not allow you to schedule an occurrence of a course in the timetable unless all the components of that course are available at that time. Each course can contain up to 240 components and you can define categories for different kinds of courses.

For each course, you have to enter a

unique course Code,
descriptive Name,
Category, defining the type of the current course,
MAX number of times this course is used and
the list of components connected to this course.

Courses can also used as special events like meetings, appointments, tests, which occur only once (MAX=1), whereas in schools the same course structure is in most cases used several times (MAX>1). Courses contain sets of components (or collections) defining together all teaching requirements for the institution (such as school or university). The number of components attached for each course can vary from 1 to 240 and Mimosa does not restrict the course structures.

Samples of most common course structures:

Note that the course structures may vary according to your needs. Mimosa does not restrict how you want to create the courses, which can represent any kind of events, such as meetings, exams and so on.

Example 1: A simple example of a typical school course (one class/group, teacher and room):

Example 2: Teacher is teaching students of two classes/groups at the same time:

Example 3: Students of one class/group are split for two teachers:

If a class/group are split to two courses and the courses are run concurrently, they should be combined in a same course, containing all components they require:

Example 4: Students of two classes/groups are split for three teachers:

Example 5: Personalised teaching for six students by one teacher:

Example 6: An example of a meeting (one room, two or more teachers):

Example 7: Conference presentations or sessions can also be interpreted as courses:

(Typically conference attendees can act in up to three different roles: as chairmen, presenters, and referees. Note that each session can occupy one or several of them. Streams are used in conferences to exclude papers of the same area of interest to be scheduled in the same time).

Example 8: Music/theatre rehearsals constitute also courses:

(In music rehearsals, also instruments and other needed equipment can be included as components and scheduled).

On page Create and edit courses courses and their structures are explained in more detail.

When you select to edit an existing course (by clicking [Enter] or [F2]), the following window is displayed:

When you create a new course, none of the components exists in the left box. In this example, lectures have already been scheduled, and Mimosa allows you to add only those components to courses which do not cause any conflicts.

When the list of courses is double-clicked, the list of components of the course plus its timetable are automatically displayed on top of the course list (if they exist). Double-clicking the list again hides them.

When creating a new course, you must also supply a collection of components, which are treated as simultaneously with the course plus the total number of lectures that must be allocated to weeks (MAX).

If you have checked [x] Check room capacity in Options|Other and at least one of the component names contains the character "#" followed by the number indicating either room seats (in room category) or seat requirements (in other categories), Mimosa displays in Courses view also an extra column SEATS containing the difference of the room seats and seat requirements.

For instance, if a course consists of a group with the size of 23 (students), one teacher (1) and one room with 28 seats, the SEATS displays the (positive or negative) difference of the seat capacity and seat requirements: +4 = 28-23-1. In the case when there are less room seats than what is required by the groups and teachers, this number is negative. If the course contains more components, Mimosa compares the sum of all seat requirements with the sum of seat capacities and displays their difference. All numbers in components belonging to the Category for rooms are interpreted as seat capacities whereas the numbers in other categories are interpreted as seat requirements.

See section Create and edit courses for examples about different types of courses.

The order of the courses in the list can be changed with the help of the Move up and Move down buttons or by sorting them all according to some appropriate criteria (Tools|Sort). Note that it is very easy to import the list of courses and their components via Clipboard, provided you have entered it in a spreadsheet application with a specific format below (Code, Name, Category number, MAX):

Menu selections:

Edit

With Edit menu selections you can edit the list of courses.

New course

Creates a new course. Each course requires one or more components in order to be able to schedule it. The lectures and timetables of the components are combined from the lectures of the courses they are attached to.

Edit course

Edits the information of the current course, such as the course code, course name, coures category and the number of the lectures of the course (MAX). This number represents the maximum number of its lectures that can be scheduled.

Delete course

Deletes the current course.

See more detailed instructions at Create and edit courses.

Duplicate course

This command duplicates the last activated course by creating a new course with the same

name
category
number of lectures (MAX)
list of components and
lectures allocated to weeks.

The code for the new course is generated automatically by using the old stored code as the basis (by appending letters a, b, c,…). You can change the suggested new code and edit all other information of this course later on.

Duplicate course many times

This selection is a generalisation of the above Duplicate course once selection, but it also enables to automatically replace a selected component in the courses that are going to be duplicated. This feature is useful in cases, where the same course is held for several classes by the same teacher and in the same room.

In the example below, you are assumed to duplicate the course "Basics of Internet" for groups "Form-A", "Form-B" and "Form-C". Originally this course was created for the group "G105". After the duplication, the three courses are identical with original except that the old component was replaced by the three new components and scheduled lectures were erased in the new courses. Since the other components remain the same in the duplicated courses, it is impossible to schedule them in the same time.

After you have selected the component of the course to be duplicated, you are prompted to select one or more components of the same category that are going to replace the original component in the duplicated courses that will be created. You can replace the automatically generated course code after each course is created or do it afterwards. You are prompted to edit the new code which is automatically created and you may also edit the course information when a new course is created.

Copy to the Clipboard

Selected courses are copied onto the Clipboard. Each submenu provides a different format for the table it creates.. In each selection, you always create in the resulting table the course code as the first column, but the content in other cells in that row depend on the particular menu selection. Many selections have analogous formats with similar selections in Components view.

Note that the title row captions (containing texts like "CODE", "NAME", "MAX",...) are always omitted.

The description of the available Clipboard formats in this selection can be found in Import and Export with Clipboard|Courses view.

In the last three selections you can choose to calculate the lectures from the Scheduled lectures, from the Allocated lectures or from their difference, Unscheduled lectures.

In selection 6, The Clipboard content is typically a large matrix containing as rows, lists of all components that can be added to the corresponding course without causing conflicts. This can be used as a list containing all permissible selections.

Paste from the Clipboard

Course codes, names, category numbers (1-7), the maximum number of lectures and, optionally, course collections can be pasted from the Clipboard and added to the list of courses. If a matching course code is found, the name and category is replaced. If collections are also pasted, all those components which have not already been created and not found in the component list are automatically omitted. Collections can be pasted in various modes (Replace, Add, Remove).

The description of the available Clipboard formats in this selection can be found in Import and Export with Clipboard|Courses view.

Set colour to (course)

Changes the colour of the current course.

Lock/unlock (course) [Ctrl+U]

Locks and unlocks the current course.

Split (course)

Course split is often a useful tool to change some of the components of the course after the course has been scheduled. This occurs for instance when the room or teacher have to be replaced for selected slots only. With this tool you can select one or more slots from the original course to be moved to the new course and in the same time also edit the list of components of the new course. When you split a course, the total number of lectures remains the same. You can continue to split the course into smaller parts as long as it has two or more scheduled lectures and you can experiment which components you can add or replace when selected slots have been selected and deselected.

In normal use the concept "course" may consist of a sequence of different events (or sections) which may require different sets of components. For Mimosa courses are events which always require that all of its components are automatically scheduled when the course scheduled. If you have initially attached all possible components to the course although they are required only occasionally, you can fix the problem with this tool as well. In this case, you select the slots where you have too many components, remove them with [- Remove] button and click the [Split] button to split the course in two parts (and continue if the course must be split further).

Select from the dropdown list on the left the course you want to split, if you do not want to split the default course. You can use the arrow keys to go to the next and previous course on the course list. To be able to split a course in two courses, it must contain at least two scheduled lectures.

Next select the time slots on the left panel you want to move to the new course. After you have selected the first time slot, Mimosa displays the selected time slots and components of the new course on the right. When you click the button [Split], this new course is created with the selected time slots and the list of components.

Before you accept to split the course, you can change the list of the components of the new course and its suggested code and name. You can add new components to the new course and remove current components, by using the [+ Add] or [- Remove] buttons on bottom right. The list of the available components you can add to the new course varies according to the time slots you have selected from the current course. When you have added a component which does not exist in the original course, you cannot change the selection of the time slots anymore.

When you change the suggested code and name of the new course, Mimosa checks that the code that you input does not already exist.

New components which were not available before course split are shown in bold face. These components become available when you select and deselect the time slots of the original course. The list of the available components of the original course will typically be highest when you have selected half of the slots. You cannot change the list of the components of the original course in this view.

Select a component on the list of Available components and then click the [+ Add] button to add a new component to the list of components of the new course or select a component on the list of Selected components and click the [- Remove] button to remove this component from list of components of the new course. You cannot remove the last component from this list of Selected components. If you want to add a new component to a specific location on the list, click first the component below it.

If you do not want to split the course as suggested, click [Don't split]. When you want to leave this view, select [Close]. You can continue to split courses as long as each course to be split has at least two scheduled lectures.

This tool is most useful when you have scheduled all the lectures of the course, but you will notice that there will be exceptions in the course components selections on some slots, such as replacements and additions of teachers or rooms, for instance. To take an example, suppose that you want to replace a teacher (due to her/his unavailability) on three Thursday slots of this course without the need to create, allocate or reschedule a new course.

Uncheck the three time slots on Thursday
Click the new teacher on the Available component list and then click the [+ Add] button to add this teacher to the Selected components list
Click the teacher to be replaced on the Selected component list and then click the [- Remove] button to remove this teacher
Click [Split] to create a new course from these three slots (and remove them from the original course)

The example below demonstrates how you split a course (ABC123) in two steps. In the first step you have selected to replace a teacher. The first 5 of 15 slots remain in the original course (ABC123), and the remaining 10 slots constitute the course you have split (ABC123b).

In the next step you have selected to split the new course (ABC123b) further. For the 5 slots you have decided to add one group, teacher and room and to replace one teacher back to the original. The resulting course is now ABC123c.

After this process, the total number of lectures is remained the same, and all lectures previously scheduled in timetables are in the same locations. Instead of the original courses, you have now courses ABC123, ABC123b and ABC123c - you can change the suggested course codes anytime.

Manage roles

It is also possible add specific roles to components which may vary by courses they have been attached to. A role is a user-defined description which is added to selected components - typically persons - when they are connected to specific courses. The roles are shown on all tooltips, web reports and printed reports, if the option [x] Show roles on reports on screen has been checked.

Roles are descriptive elements only, and they do not affect the scheduling.

The same person can appear as an "Observer", "Supervisor" or "Teacher" in different teaching events.
If Mimosa is used to schedule a conference, the same participant can have various roles, depending on the session: "Chairman", "Keynote speaker", "Contributor" and "Opponent".
Persons may have different roles in music festivals by their task or instruments ("Conductor, "Viola", "Violin" etc.).
If courses denote meetings, the roles "Treasurer" or "Secretary" can be used to highlight key tasks of some persons.

Invoke the selection Edit|Manage roles on the course you want add roles to or remove roles from. The course components are displayed on the left below the selected course name.

Use the arrow keys (,) to change the active course if needed.

You can create up to 500 different role names. When the course content is shown on web reports or printed reports, the role name is appended to the component name, separated by a space: [Component name] [Role name]. When the role name is changed, the changed role name is shown in reports.

Edit the list of roles:
Use the buttons Add, Edit and Remove to add, edit and remove roles. Each role name can appear on the list only once. Use the arrow keys (,) to move the positions of the roles on the list.

Copy and paste roles:
You can copy the list of roles to the Clipboard with the Copy button and paste it from the Clipboard with the Paste button.

Add new role:
After you have clicked a role on the role list box and a component on the component list box, click the Add button between the boxes to add the selected role to the select component.

Remove role:
Click a component on the component list box and then the Remove button between the boxes to remove the role from the selected component.

Clear all roles:
Clear all roles from the active course by clicking the Clear button between the boxes.

Manage several courses and roles:
Right click to invoke the pop-up menu allowing to extend the functionality of Add and Remove in all courses where the current component appears, or Clear all roles from all courses.

Uncheck [x] Show roles on reports and on screen if you do not want to show the roles you have selected.

After you have selected and added the role(s) to the component(s), they are displayed on the left box as follows:

The timetable cell displays the roles as below:

On course pages the roles are displayed as below:

Erase lectures [Ctrl+Del]

Clear allocated and scheduled lectures of the course.

Erase timetables [Shift+Del]

Clear scheduled lectures of the course.

Move up

Moves the current course up.

Move down

Moves the current course down.

Optimise room usage [Ctrl+G]

This selection enables you to optimise room selections by swapping rooms across courses. To be enable to use this feature, the room capacities and seat requirements (typically group sizes) must be tagged in the names of the components by using the character "#" followed by a whole number. For each course Mimosa calculates the number of seats which is obtained by reducting the seat requirement from the room sizes. If the capacity is not defined, it is assumed to be = 1. For example, teachers and individual students are assumed to have a capacity demand = 1.

You can also optimise the room usage manually by going through the courses and then swapping the rooms in order to reach the desired results. For instance, if you note that the box containing SEATS displays a negative number, swap the current room with another room that has more capacity. When optimising room usage manually, you can control that the room swaps are always appropriate.

At the start the seat statistics of the courses is displayed, showing how many courses have lack of seats and how many have excess seats. The goal is to swap rooms across courses so that the number of the seat capacities and seat requirements match (as much as possible). The todal number of the lack of seats and excess seats are smaller after the optimisation if it has been successful.

When you accept to continue with [Yes], Mimosa goes through all courses and proposes you one or more swap options which provide more balanced solutions and do not create conflicts in timetables. Select [Swap] to accept the selected swap option or [Skip] to reject it and move to the next course. [Cancel] stops the process. For each option you can also see the number of seats after the swap. Note that if you swap rooms after courses have been scheduled, you have less swap options available.

If the course has several rooms, all rooms are gone through and all those swap options which produce smaller deviations in the SEATS of the courses are displayed. On the top of the screen also the number of swaps and the number of balanced seats are displayed.

Below is a simple example how the swap is done with two courses having both one room. Before the swap, Course A has SEATS=-3 and Course B has SEATS=+18 (seats deviation 3+18=+21). After the swap, Course A has SEATS=+4 and Course B has SEATS=+11 (seats deviation 4+11=+15), balancing the seats by 6 (=21-15).

All room swaps that you have been made are stored. After the manual process you can then select to continue optimising rooms automatically by letting Mimosa to use the same pairs of rooms for all courses. For instance, R203=>R331,R335 means that you can always replace room R203 with room R331 or room R335.

If you select [Yes], Mimosa goes through all courses and room swap combinations and swaps the rooms according to above instructions, if it results in more balanced courses. This process stops automatically when no improvements cannot be made. If you select [No], you can also select to clear the history of the room swaps that you have made. Room swaps are stored on disk for later use.

This tool is designed to balance the seat capacity and seat requirements for courses with fixed rooms. Courses with manually assigned rooms - where each slot can have a different room - can be balanced most conveniently with the Tools|Select rooms manually selection, using the imitate tool.

Copy daily schedules

This selection allows to copy daily course schedules from one day to another day of within the same week. It also allows to erase a course schedules from a given day. This option can be used, for instance, when the same daily schedule is going to be applied also in some other days. In this case, you have to only create schedules for a given day and then copy it to other day (within the same week).

If you want to copy daily schedules across weeks, use the selections Edit|Copy week and Edit|Paste week special|5 Single day of week in Weeks view.

You are first asked to select the day of week from which the schedules are copied from and then the day of week where schedules are copied to. The selected days must be different.

If you have more than one week in your file, you are asked to pick the weeks where copying is allowed. After these selections, you select the courses which are included.

After these selections, use have three options:

1) Copy schedules from the selected day to another day
2) Only erase schedules from the target day,
3) Perform both operations 1) and 2): First erase the schedules from the target day and then copy the schedules to this day

Note that in the first case 1), schedules of the source day are merged with the schedules of the target day, whereas in the third case 3), copying is done after the previous schedule is erased.

Combine courses

You can automatically combine courses when they do not cause any conflicts. The application searches for pairs to combine and prompts you to accept the action. Note that combining courses is not necessary, but it can reduce the number of unnecessary courses and give you a better picture of the structure of your data.

With identical lists of components

You can combine all courses with similar collections (list of components) by adding together their weekly-allocated lectures and constructing unions of their scheduled lectures. The selection automatically examines all pairs of courses having identical lists of components, prompts to combine them and lets the user to input new code and name for the new combined course, without altering the total amount of lectures of the courses.

In addition, you can optionally require that also the names of the courses to be combined must be identical.

If you select [Yes] or [No], the next pair of courses with identical lists of components is searched for. If you select [Yes], also the names of the courses must match.

If the answer is [Yes], the two courses are combined, and if the answer is [All], all subsequent similar courses are automatically combined (by selecting the code and the name of the first course for the combined course). If [No] is selected, courses are not combined and [Cancel] stops the process. This tool is efficient in identifying reducing the number of unnecessary courses that have mistakenly been created twice, but they have similar structures.

If you have created courses without any components, you can automatically remove them from the list of courses.

With disjoint lists of components

You can combine courses having disjoint collections. These courses have no common components and combining of them means adding the collections of both courses together. This operation requires that timetables of both courses are identical (or empty). The selection automatically examines all pairs of courses satisfying these conditions, prompts to combine them. The name of the combined course is constructed from the codes of these combined courses. If the confirming answer is [Yes], the two courses are combined, and if the answer is [All], all subsequent valid pairs of courses are automatically combined (by selecting the code and the name of the first course).

View

Select grid font

Selects the font used in this view.

Course info [Ctrl+H]

Displays the list of the components (collection) of the active course. If you also want to replace some of the components, remove or add a component, select the appropriate component and then click Edit? button. Page Course Info contains more information about this.

Show collections

This selection displays or hides a window on top of the courses window, showing the collection of the current course. Double-clicking the list of courses has the same effect.

Show snapshot timetable

This selection will show/hide the following snapshot timetable of the current course and current week. User the arrow keys on bottom of the table to change the week.

Weekly lectures [Ctrl+W]

This selection shows/hides the weekly timetables and/or lectures of courses.

Find ... [Ctrl+F3]

By entering the code or name (or a substring) locates the first course that matches the search criteria and makes it the active one. The search method is not case-sensitive. Press [F3] to locate the next code with the same search criteria.

Find by components ...

This extended search mode allows the user to locate only those courses that have some of the selected components in their collections or those that do NOT have any of them. Click [F3] to locate the next code with the same search criteria.

In collections

Finds those courses that have one or more of the selected components in their collections.

NOT in collections

Finds those courses that do NOT have any of the selected components in their collections.

Search again [F3]

Locates the next course that matches the search criteria and makes it the active one.

Best matches [Ctrl+B]

Finds other components with the most similar collections compared with the current (last activated) course. Courses are listed in the order of best match, each course code followed by the percentage number indicating the similarity of their collections (100%=exact match). This option can be used when creating a new course when the user is not certain if a similar (or near similar) course has already been created.

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