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The design and implementation of an interactive course-timetabling system

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Abstract

We describe our design and implementation of a dual-objective course-timetabling system for the Science Division at Rollins College, and we compare the results of our system with the actual timetable that was manually constructed for the Fall 2009 school term. The course timetables at Rollins, as at most colleges in the U.S., must be created before students enroll in classes, and our “wish list” of pairs of classes that we would like to offer in non-overlapping timeslots is considerably larger than if we were to consider only those that absolutely must be in non-overlapping timeslots. This necessitates assigning different levels of conflict severity for the class pairs and setting our objective to minimize total conflict severity. Our second objective is to create timetables that result in relatively compact schedules for the instructors and students.

In addition to our automatic construction, a second, equally important component of our system is a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables the user to participate in the input, construction, and modification of a timetable. In the input phase, course incompatibility, instructor and student preferences, and desire for compact schedules all require subjective judgments. The GUI allows the user to quantify and convert this information to the weighted-graph model. In the construction and modification phase, the GUI enables the user to directly assign or reassign courses to timeslots while guided by heuristics.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Dean of Faculty at Rollins College for her generous support of our presentation at the 8th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT10) in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We also thank the faculty in the Science Division at Rollins for their willingness to try our system for constructing the timetable for the 2011/12 academic year. The second author thanks the McKean Foundation of Rollins College for their support of our research through the McKean Award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Rollins College, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park, FL, 32789, USA

    Anthony Wehrer & Jay Yellen

Authors
  1. Anthony Wehrer
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  2. Jay Yellen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jay Yellen.

Appendix: Course scheduling questionnaire for Fall 2011

Appendix: Course scheduling questionnaire for Fall 2011

Please check whether the following set of courses and the indicated sections are those that your department will be offering for Fall 2011. Missing or extra sections should be added or deleted accordingly. Since labs need to be given their own timeslots and rooms, they are listed as separate sections indicated with an “L” following the course number.

For each course/section listed, please provide the following information:

  1. (a)

    List the instructors that will be teaching each section of the course. If the name of the instructor is unknown but will be teaching specific courses/sections, you may use an artificial identifier for the name.

  2. (b)

    List at least four suitable timeslots, but the more you can list, the more opportunities you create for your majors to take other courses in the Science Division. If you have clear-cut preferences for certain timeslots over others, follow those with the symbol (∗).

  3. (c)

    List at least two or three suitable rooms, unless the course must be taught in a special room.

  4. (d)

    Providing the next piece of information will help us achieve our primary goal of assigning non-overlapping timeslots to any pair of classes for which it is either necessary or desirable to avoid a conflict.

    Please list the other courses/sections in the Science Division that must, should, or would be nice to be in a non-overlapping timeslot with the given course/section. If the course is outside your department, simply list the course and do not specify its sections. For each course/section in the list, indicate Heavy (H), Medium (M), or Light (L) for the severity of the conflict that you are wanting to avoid. Here are our working definitions of these three levels of conflict severity:

    Heavy—essentially prohibitive for one or more of the following reasons:

    • Student Overlap: Both courses/sections are required for the major and may be taken concurrently and/or both courses tend to have a fairly large overlap of students. This includes situations where students are allowed to attend certain lab sections from a given lecture section of a course.

    • Same Resource (or Room): Both courses/sections require exclusive use of a single resource (e.g., special room or equipment).

    Medium:

    • Both courses/sections tend to have a student overlap but not quite as large and not as critical for them to take both concurrently.

    Light:

    • Would be nice to give students the option of taking both courses/sections but even less critical.

    If a conflict severity is deemed Heavy, please indicate in parentheses which of the reasons apply when it is not for student overlap.

MAT 140 Intro to Discrete Mathematics

MAT 140—Section 1

(a) :

Instructors

  • Yellen

(b) :

Suitable Timeslots

  • MWF 11:00 am–11:50 am

  • TR 11:00 am–12:15 pm

  • MWF 12:00 pm–12:50 pm

  • MWF 10:00 am–10:50 am

  • MWF 1:00 pm–1:50 pm

  • TR 8:00 am–9:15 am (∗)

  • MW 2:00 pm–3:15 pm

  • MWF 2:00 pm–2:50 pm

  • TR 2:00 pm–3:15 pm

  • MWF 8:00 am–8:50 am (∗)

(b) :

Suitable Rooms

  • Bush 361

  • Bush 362

  • Bush 301

  • Bush 271

(c) :

Conflicts to Avoid

  • MAT 111—H

  • MAT 112—M

  • CMS 167—H

  • BIO 120—L

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Wehrer, A., Yellen, J. The design and implementation of an interactive course-timetabling system. Ann Oper Res 218, 327–345 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-013-1384-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-013-1384-6

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