Easy for you, Difficult for me : Help a school

N

n

Hello! Here is a problem I hope you can point me to a solution. It

Problem: A teacher needs to know which lesson to teach.

A school has a curriculum with 26 lessons, A-Z.

For a given class, a random number of students arrive, each of which
has completed a random number of lessons taken at random from the
curriculum.

The teacher needs to quickly identify which, if any, of the lessons in
the curriculum have not yet been taught to any of the students.

The teacher selects one of the untaught lessons and marks on each of
the student "cards" that they have now been taught that lesson by that
teacher.


Example i

3 students arrive: 1,2 &3

1 has studied A, C and D;
2 has studied lessons A though W;
3 has studied A, C and E.

In this situation, it is easy to see that the teacher could teach
either X, Y or Z. (You can imagine it would be a lot more difficult if
there were 10 students.)

The teacher would teach X, and mark on the "cards" that 1,2 and 3 had
now also studied X

Example ii

The same students arrive as in the above example, as well as student
4:

4 has studied B through Z

The teacher can see that it is impossible to teach this class a
lesson from the curriculum that has not already been covered already.
The teacher must therefore establish which lesson has either:

been taught to the fewest students
or
been taught to the students, but not by that teacher

OK, here is my paper and pencil way of doing this:

each student has a piece of paper three columns: A-Z in the first
colum, the adjacent colum is a check box "taught", and the adjacent
column is "initials" indicating the teacher that taught it.

When a class forms, the papers are put on the table, the teacher looks
at them, and finds a lesson not yet taught.

What would be the easy way to do this using Microsoft?
I think Excel would be suitable, but maybe there is a kind of pre-
built, sort of "prettier" way of doing this.

Thank you for your interest in this. I would really like your help!
 
D

db

use what you think is best suited,
then examine of the pro's and con's...

- db
Hello! Here is a problem I hope you can point me to a solution. It

Problem: A teacher needs to know which lesson to teach.

A school has a curriculum with 26 lessons, A-Z.

For a given class, a random number of students arrive, each of which
has completed a random number of lessons taken at random from the
curriculum.

The teacher needs to quickly identify which, if any, of the lessons in
the curriculum have not yet been taught to any of the students.

The teacher selects one of the untaught lessons and marks on each of
the student "cards" that they have now been taught that lesson by that
teacher.


Example i

3 students arrive: 1,2 &3

1 has studied A, C and D;
2 has studied lessons A though W;
3 has studied A, C and E.

In this situation, it is easy to see that the teacher could teach
either X, Y or Z. (You can imagine it would be a lot more difficult if
there were 10 students.)

The teacher would teach X, and mark on the "cards" that 1,2 and 3 had
now also studied X

Example ii

The same students arrive as in the above example, as well as student
4:

4 has studied B through Z

The teacher can see that it is impossible to teach this class a
lesson from the curriculum that has not already been covered already.
The teacher must therefore establish which lesson has either:

been taught to the fewest students
or
been taught to the students, but not by that teacher

OK, here is my paper and pencil way of doing this:

each student has a piece of paper three columns: A-Z in the first
colum, the adjacent colum is a check box "taught", and the adjacent
column is "initials" indicating the teacher that taught it.

When a class forms, the papers are put on the table, the teacher looks
at them, and finds a lesson not yet taught.

What would be the easy way to do this using Microsoft?
I think Excel would be suitable, but maybe there is a kind of pre-
built, sort of "prettier" way of doing this.

Thank you for your interest in this. I would really like your help!
 
B

Bob I

Spreadsheet with the students names in Column A, Column B used for
"indicating" those in attendance today. Columns C through AB used to
indicate the lessons learned. Sort on column B and look for an empty
column in C through AB to determine lesson to be "taught". Or Column
with the least amount of "X's"
 

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