Feature note

Combining student groups for a single class

Merging cohorts is routine. Getting the room size right for a merged cohort is where it usually goes wrong.

The groups screen of the Wise Timetable browser administration showing three first-year groups of a branch, each with its student count and the number of cohorts it belongs to — **Groups, with the number that actually matters.** Each group carries its student count and how many cohorts it is part of — which is what decides whether two of them can be taught together and which room will hold the result.

Automatic totals, manual override

Multiple student groups can be combined to attend a single class. Wise Timetable calculates the total number of students across all combined groups automatically and suggests an appropriately sized room, which removes the most common source of capacity error — somebody adding up cohort sizes by hand and forgetting one.

That number can then be adjusted manually. This matters more than it sounds: for a large optional lecture, or a session where you know from experience that only a subset of a cohort attends, scheduling for the theoretical total wastes your largest rooms on half-empty classes.

The utilisation consequence

Systematic room oversizing is one of the findings that shows up in almost every room utilisation exercise, and combined-group sessions are usually where it originates. A realistic attendance figure, entered once, is worth more than a great deal of downstream optimisation.

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