Group

In Omniscol, a group is a subdivision of a class. All the students in a group are also students of the parent class.

You create a group whenever a subset of a class's students must attend a course different from the rest of the class — even temporarily, for a single lesson. Examples:

• lab half-groups ("Lab-A", "Lab-B"),
• elective groups ("Latinists", "Hellenists", "Spanish 2nd language", "German 2nd language"),
• level-based groups ("Advanced English", "Standard English").

Strong recommendation: one group per course

Even if the Latinists and the Hellenists of a class are in practice the same students, create two separate groups. Otherwise the alignments with other classes become ambiguous and conflicts are hard to diagnose.

Conversely: no need to create a "Whole class" group. When a course is meant for the whole class, no group is attached; the course is simply assigned to the class.

Expected headcount

Enter the number of students expected in the group. This field is optional but recommended: the solver uses it to pick classrooms with adequate capacity.

Mixing students from several classes

The group concept stops at the boundary of one class. To mix the Latinists of 8A, 8B and 8C who have lessons together:

• create a "Latinists" group in each of the three classes,
• then create an alignment that ties the three together.

You can also use a group of groups, which is easier to edit when the grouping needs to evolve.

Free groups

For open enrollment (evening workshops, electives not constrained by class), see the notion of a free group — membership is not fixed in advance, students can join or leave without generating conflicts.