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Test scheduling

Introduction

In the majority of experiments, the information you provide in the protocol is enough to define the order in which tests will be performed. This has the advantage that ANY-maze is then able to prepare a Test schedule, showing exactly which test on which animal you should perform next.

However, you may encounter situations in which the test order is simply too complex to be defined within the program, in which case you can opt to manually schedule the tests. A typical case when this is necessary is when you don't actually know beforehand when the animals will be tested - for example, they're tested soon after birth and you can't predict when they'll be born.

Although you may be tempted to simply choose manual scheduling in all cases (because it seems to make things more flexible), we don't recommend you do this as having ANY-maze organise the schedule for you is easier and helps to avoid mistakes.

Letting ANY-maze automatically schedule the tests

The first fundamental of test order is that the animals in an experiment are numbered, and animal 1 will be tested before animal 2. Nevertheless, there are still a number of options available to you.

In most experiments, you will probably want to perform the first stage for all the animals before proceeding on to the second stage - in a water-maze, for example, you would probably complete a 'Training' stage for all the animals before starting a 'Probe' stage. Nevertheless, there may be cases when you want to run through all the stages for one animal before you start the first stage for the second animal, and ANY-maze includes an option which allows you to do this.

Assuming you will complete one stage for all the animals before starting the next one, there's still the issue of the test order within stages which consist of more than one trial - for this, ANY-maze includes three possibilities:

You test all the animals through the first trial before starting the second trial.

You test the first animal through all its trials before starting the second animal.

This option is a little more complicated and allows you to group the animals and then test them within their groups. For example, you could put the animals into groups of say three. Thus animals 1,2 and 3 would be in the first group, animals 4,5 and 6 in the second, and so on. Within the first group, all the animals would then be tested in their first trial, then in their second trial, then their third etc. When the first group has finished then the second group will start. Thus this grouped system is effectively a mix of the previous two.

One last point about test order - when you actually run the tests, you can make alterations to the test order if you need to.

Scheduling tests manually

If the automatic scheduling won't suit your experiment, you can choose to manually schedule tests using the Test scheduling element in the protocol list. If you do this, you will still need to specify the stages your experiment will include and the number of trials there will be in each stage, however, ANY-maze won't actually assign any tests to the animals, you'll have to do this manually.

To manually schedule a test, you simply have to Add a test to the experiment, specifying which animal the test will be performed on. ANY-maze will expect you to perform the tests in the order you enter them. So, for example, if you add a test for animal 10 then one for animal 1 and then one for animal 3, you will test the animals in that order - 10, 1, 3. As you perform the tests for an animal, ANY-maze will simply assume that the first test the animal has is the first trial in the first stage, the second test is the second trial in the first stage (or the first trial in the second stage if the first stage only has 1 trial) and so on.

As mentioned above, it's usually easier to allow ANY-maze to schedule tests unless your schedule is simply too complex to be defined within the program.

Test scheduling

Introduction

Letting ANY-maze automatically schedule the tests

Scheduling tests manually

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