Strategies for Organizing Students into Groups
SLP Scheduler provides many ways to control how your students are organized into groups.
The methods available represent a mix of hard constraints and soft constraints. For reasons described in the linked article, soft constraints lead to more candidate schedules, more quickly. Try to use soft constraints over hard constraints whenever possible.
Keep Students Apart
Sometimes it's most important to keep certain students apart in group therapy sessions. Below are several ways to accomplish that using SLP Scheduler:
| Mechanism | Type | Description | Constraint Type | Location in Caseload Editor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buildings | Automatic | Keep apart students in different buildings | Hard | Buildings + Student |
| “Prefer Not” Groupings | Optional | Keep apart specific students | Soft | Groupings |
| “Must Not” Groupings | Optional | Keep apart specific students | Hard | Groupings |
| Categories | Optional | Keep apart large groups of students in different categories. More info. | Hard | Categories + Student |
| “Individual” Delivery Model | Optional | Keep specific student in a session by him/herself | Hard | Student Sessions |
Keep Students Together
Below are several ways to keep students together using SLP Scheduler:
| Mechanism | Type | Description | Constraint Type | Location in Caseload Editor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Session Goals | Automatic | Keep together students with common session goals | Soft | Student Sessions |
| “Prefer” Groupings | Optional | Keep together specific students | Soft | Groupings |
| “Prefer Only” Groupings | Optional | Keep together specific students (with no others) | Soft | Groupings |
| “Must” Groupings | Optional | Keep together specific students | Hard | Groupings |
| “Must Only” Groupings | Optional | Keep together specific students (with no others) | Hard | Groupings |
Customizations
In addition to all of the above mechanisms, there are several tweakable settings that you can adjust, which affect how students are grouped:
| Mechanism | Description | Constraint Type | Location in Caseload Editor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum Grade Span | Maximum difference between highest and lowest grade levels you allow in the same group | Hard | Therapist Groups |
| Maximum Group Size | Maximum number of students to allow in a single group | Hard | Therapist Groups |
| Minimize Behavior Cost | Relative importance of keeping groups smaller, when possible | Soft | Preferences |
| Minimize Grade Span Cost | Relative importance of mixing grades in the same group therapy session | Soft | Preferences |
| Minimize Goal Count Cost | Relative importance of targeting multiple/many goals within a single group | Soft | Preferences |
| Maximize Grouping Students Preferred Together | Relative importance of respecting “Prefer” and “Prefer Only” groupings | Soft | Preferences |
| Minimize Grouping Students Preferred Apart | Relative importance of respecting “Prefer Not” groupings | Soft | Preferences |
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