The Mazévo Optimizer is used to assign rooms to courses that are imported from your Student Information System (SIS). This article describes how the Optimizer determines room assignments.
The order courses are optimized.
The optimizer orders the course in the term by the following criteria:
Back-to-Back Grouping - The optimizer groups courses into back-to-back courses and non-back-to-back courses. Mazévo will optimize back-to-back classes first. A back-to-back course has the following matching elements:
- Start and end dates for the term
- Meets on the same days of the week
- Has the same instructor
- The course has 10 minutes or less between the ending time and the starting time of another class. Mazévo Support can adjust the time between classes.
Course Duration - For each group of courses within the back-to-back groupings, the courses are processed in descending order by course duration. Course duration is calculated as the total minutes of course time for the entire term (minutes/day x # of Meeting days). Meeting days are the number of days per week times the number of weeks in the term. For example, a course that meets for 50 minutes per day, three days per week for the entire term, will be optimized before a class that meets 50 minutes per day, two days per week.
Enrollment - Courses are then ordered within course duration by the enrollment in descending order. If two courses have the same course duration, the optimizer will assign the course with the larger enrollment a room first.
This processing order is displayed in the first column; Sequence. The sequence is automatically assigned by Mazévo and can not be changed.
Assigning a room to a course
Once the courses are ordered as described above, the optimizer starts the room assignment process. A course is assigned a room based upon the following logic:
- If a course has been excluded explicitly, it is skipped.
- If a course has been assigned a room, either the SIS room or a manually selected room, it is skipped.
- Using the Subject Building Preferences, a list of rooms for the course is compiled. This list of rooms includes the rooms in the preferred buildings and optionally, the rooms for all other buildings.
- The list of rooms is further refined by the Course Type / Room Type Preferences.
- From this list of rooms, the smallest room is selected that will accommodate the enrollment based on the capacity of the room and the desired seat fill.
- A room from this list is assigned to the course with priority given to previously assigned rooms in the list. If the course is cross-listed or shares space with another course(s), that course(s) will be assigned the same room at this point in the process.
- If no rooms are available, the course will have NO room assigned.
- The optimizer will then proceed to the next course.
If you run the optimizer a second time, any course that has an assigned room that is not locked will be re-optimized. To lock a room assigned by the optimizer, select the course (using the checkbox) and select Lock Room Assignment.