Group alignments

An alignment links several groups belonging to different classes: they must take the same course, in the same time slot, in the same classroom, with the same teacher.

Important condition: the alignment must be based on the same subject in the different classes. If two classes have distinct subjects, even pedagogically very close ones, an alignment is not a good way to model the situation.

In practice, where a class division stays inside one class, an alignment spans several classes.

Use cases

Alignments are used to create transverse courses where several classes each have a small number of students to bring together (align) for one specific shared course, which they attend together. This is for example the case for:

• Latinists in 5A, 5B and 5C who take the Latin course together.
• Cross-class electives in high school: political science, art history, a third language, etc.
• Speciality courses.
• Multi-programme core curriculum in higher education: an introductory course shared by several master's programmes.

If you need to align entire classes, first create in each class a group representing that entire class, then align those groups.

Creation

1. First create, in each class concerned, a group, preferably with the same name (example: "Latinistes" in 5A, in 5B, and in 5C).
2. Go to the Group alignment tab.
3. Click Add an alignment and select the groups from the different classes.

When a group is part of an alignment, it appears on all relevant screens with a link icon .

Consequences

Once aligned, the group in each class is tied to the shared course. In practice:

• The course's lessons must be created in the classes as mirror images, with in particular the same duration, the same teacher and, where applicable, the same classroom.
• If a lesson of a class with an aligned group is positioned on a given day and time, then all the other classes in the alignment must have the same mirrored lesson, each with its corresponding aligned group, in the same position.
• The hourly volumes and the way they are split into lessons with the various aligned groups must be strictly identical for the subject concerned — otherwise Omniscol raises an inconsistency diagnostic.
• A change (moving a lesson, changing the classroom, changing the teacher, adding a memo) made on a lesson must be propagated to all aligned classes (the system tries to guess which lessons mirror each other to make this as automatic as possible).

Diagnostics — frequent inconsistencies

Alignments are sensitive to discrepancies. Typical diagnostics:

• Diverging hourly volume: the "Latinistes" group in 8A has 3 one-hour Latin lessons, the one in 8B has 2. Either harmonise (3 everywhere), or unalign (2 aligned hours, one hour on another, non-aligned Latinist group).
• Different classroom on an aligned lesson: an alignment implies a single classroom. If you manually force a different classroom on one class for its lesson, the diagnostic is raised.
• Different teacher: the same applies.

Tip — one group per course/subject

Because alignments are very sensitive to the requirement of perfectly mirrored creation, it is strongly recommended to create one group per subject or course concerned in each class to be aligned. In other words: do not reuse a generic group (typically: A/B groups) for different subjects when a strong alignment logic is involved. Otherwise you get ambiguous alignments that the solver cannot disambiguate. Instead, create dedicated groups, which you can link to each other without fearing unwanted side effects.