An automated university course timetabling system developed in a distributed environment: A case study

Abstract

In the present study we examine the design and implementation of a computer network based system to aid the construction of a university course timetable. The proposed system uses a centralized database, which contains all the appropriate information and operates on a computing platform. The different university departments collect all the appropriate parts of the database in which they have access and update them. Moreover, the updated database is processed by the timetable constructors to produce timetables for each one of the departments separately, which are then forwarded to appropriate nodes of the network. A unified version of the timetable is also available. The system uses an integer programming model that assigns courses to time slots and rooms to construct each department’s timetable. An automated procedure is generated to link the integer programming model with each department’s data and to resolve conflicts produced by the distribution of processes. The model is supported by a flexible front-end device, which generates constraints corresponding to assumptions specified by the user and report writers, which facilitate the presentation of the resulting schedules. The whole system is flexible and allows the easy construction and testing of alternative schedules, which are pre-conditioned according to requirements specified by the user. The timetabling system has been tested with data provided by the Athens University of Economics and Business.