Links Between Students
The List sheet includes columns for you to link each student with "friends". Schools do this in many different ways, some allowing children to name one or two friends, others allowing feeder schools to specify which children work best together.
Similarly there are columns for you to indicate students who shouldn't be placed together, known as "keep-aways".
When assigning students to classes, the program will sort using the following rules:
- Any restrictions specified by the user must be adhered to
- Links as friends override links as keep-aways
- The size of a friendship group cannot exceed that specified by the user
- If A is a friend of B and B is a friend of C, then A and C are regarded as friends
If schools allow students to name friends, it is very likely there are going to be many inter-linking friendship groups. In such cases, it can be difficult to monitor which students are linked together. The purpose of the Linkview sheet is to allow users to view exactly what friendship links have been created, either intentionally or unintentially.
The program analyses all the links specified on the List sheet and recreates these children in groups (indicated by coloured bands) on the Linkview sheet.
In the example shown here, Yannie and Christina are friends and not linked to any others. Simone, Caroline and Cassie form a discrete friendhip group of three. Joseph Lipman has no links to any other student.