A TIMETABLE GENERATION SYSTEM

MEUT PURITY CHEROTICH

1033992

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER AND

INFORMATION SCIENCE, FACULTY OF SCIENCE IN THE PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA.

AUGUST, 2021
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DECLARATION

I Meut Purity Cherotich declare that this proposal is my original work and has not been
presented for a degree in any other institution for the purpose of academic reward or
otherwise and where others’ work or ideas have been included, I have adequately cited and
referenced the original source.

Signature: ………………………. Date: ……………………….

This proposal has been submitted for examination with my approval as university supervisor.

Name: ………………………………………………………………….………….

Signature: ……………………………. Date: …………………………

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ABSTRACT

Timetable generation is a tedious job for educationalists with respect to time and man power.
Providing an automatic timetable generator will help to generate timetables automatically
saving time. It avoids the complexity of setting and managing timetables manually.
Algorithms like genetic, heuristic, and resource scheduling will be used to reduce the
difficulties of timetable generation. These algorithms incorporates a number of strategy,
aimed to improve the operative-ness of the search operation generating possible timetables
for working days of the week for the teaching faculty. This will integrate by making optimal
use of all resources in a way that will best suit the constraints.

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Table of Contents

DECLARATION.........................................................................................................................................i
ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................................ii
1.0 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................1
1.1 Background information/ of the study.................................................................................................1
1.2 Problem statement................................................................................................................................1
1.3 Research objectives..............................................................................................................................2
1.3.1 General objective..........................................................................................................................2
1.3.2 Specific objectives........................................................................................................................2
1.4 Research hypotheses and/or Questions................................................................................................2
1.5 Research justification...........................................................................................................................3
1.6 Research significance...........................................................................................................................3
1.7 Scope of the study................................................................................................................................3
2.0 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW..............................................................................................5
2.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................................5
2.2 Theoretical review................................................................................................................................5
2.3 Empirical/ conceptual review...............................................................................................................6
2.4 Conceptual framework.........................................................................................................................7
2.4.1 Critic on the current method used for timetable generation.........................................................7
2.4.2 Application areas of the system....................................................................................................7
2.4.3 Advantage of the study.................................................................................................................8
2.5 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................8
3.0 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.................................................................................9
3.1 Study area and research design............................................................................................................9
3.2 Target population..................................................................................................................................9
3.3 Sample size........................................................................................................................................10
3.4 Sampling techniques..........................................................................................................................10
3.5 Data collection methods.....................................................................................................................11
3.6 Analysis..............................................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................................12
APPENDICES.........................................................................................................................................13
SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE............................................................................................................13

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1.0 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background information/ of the study

The lecturing staff spends a lot of time in timetable generation. The software program to be
designed for this project work, will capture all parameters used in creating a lecture and exam
timetable and automatically creates one with its timetable generation tool.
In most educational institutions the lecture and examination timetable schedule is done
manually. Relying on manual schedule posses a lot of disadvantages. In order to overcome
some setbacks in the method used by the department , this project brings up automated
timetable generator.
This project is to develop a program that will allow the department to provide a timely and
accurate schedule timetable in form of a program.
Automated timetable generator is to assist the department on deciding the lecture room for
each course without conflict at a specific time in a day. Moreover, the program will also
assign a unique lecture to each course but it will ensure that the lecture is not in another class
at that specific period.

1.2 Problem statement

In order to get the lasting solution to the problems encountered in the existing procedure, one
must clearly enumerate and understand some of the problems facing manual generation of
lecture timetable.
These include:
1. Time consumption: in order to set timetable by the lecturers of the institution, it is
possible for time to be wasted.
2. Duplication of record: In the process of setting a exams timetable, it is possible for
duplication of courses to occur.
3. It is with volume that the unpredictability of a manual scheduling process starts to fail. For
instance a sudden change becomes a whole work load and tends to be difficult, let alone
recreate the whole timetable, given the number of dependencies, and demand of each
individual to be catered lectures and students alike.

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1.3 Research objectives

1.3.1 General objective

The main objective of this project is to solve the problem that has been encountered in the
manual or existing system of the department by developing a timetable generation system.

1.3.2 Specific objectives

Other aims and objectives are:

1. To develop a tool that enables the department to dynamically generate a timetable for
students to access directly from the schedule table data.
2. To enable the department to present changes with ease.
3. It enables the department to plan well in advance to design the student schedule.
4. It will also enable the management and students with updated schedule information when
changes occur.
5. It will enable the management to provide timely accurate schedule data.

1.4 Research hypotheses and/or Questions

The first set of questionnaire consists of 4 sections designed for the student who is using the
timetable in their university:
i. The first section requested general information about the respondent
ii. Respondents’ perception of using the timetable system for their registration subject of
every semester
iii. Functionality of the timetable system and the objective is to get information on how
the system is function
iv. Respondents to give opinion or suggestion on their timetable. The objective of this
section is to get feedback from the respondents using the system

The second set of questionnaire consists of 6 sections, designed for the administrator or
person who is in-charge of the timetable system:
i. Requested general information about the respondent
ii. opinions about the system itself
iii. The process of doing the timetable
iv. Functionality of the system
v. Procedure in handling the clashing of timetable

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 vi. Respondent’s perception on how to improve or suggestion for their timetable system

1.5 Research justification

Instead of tedious paper work, students can view the timetable with a quick turnaround. This
system is user friendly and provides faster and better generation of timetable, which in turn
saves time. Points that justify the need of this system:

 user friendly
 faster and better generation of timetables
 saving time and man power

1.6 Research significance

The significance of this project on “ Timetable Generation System” is to improve on how

lecture and exam timetable is being generated by the school for usage by the students and
lecturers.
The study is considered of great importance in that it examines the impact of computer
introduction in developing an automated timetable generator.
It may state that the introduction of computer system to computer science for development of
the timetable generator would bring about improvement in the management in terms of time
and resources involved.

1.7 Scope of the study

The scope of this project work is on “ Timetable generation system”.

The software designed allows courses offered (registered) in each semesters to be entered in
the system for each level (diploma, masters, PHD) after which it will generate the timetable
automatically and displays it on the screen to be printed when the database administrator
clicks on the command button “generate timetable”.
The manual method of generating timetables is very cumbersome and requires a lot of time
and not even completely removes all the conflicts. The system proposed will be generating
timetables semi-automatically that will ensure the conflict free allocation of subjects assigned
to various faculties.
The system includes administrative login as well as student login. Through the student login
we can only view the timetable which has been generated, whereas through the administrative
login, the faculty and administrative block can login where the various functions can be

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performed. The faculty members are given a provision to register themselves and view the
timetable. If required, they can request for changing the lecture timing also.
The work of the administrative block is to keep a track of all the registered faculty members,
assign them the subjects, and generate the timetable for various sections of students, they also
accept the requests made by the faculty members and make changes per the requirements so
there is no conflict in the timetable generated.
Since all the timetables are generated manually in the institution, it can use this project to
generate the timetable semi-automatically, by reducing the chance the conflicts of any kind.

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2.0 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

As mentioned before timetabling problems exist, but all these problems have several
properties in common. One of these similarities is that certain entities have to be scheduled.
For instance, the institution timetabling problem has several entities such as classes ,
students , lectures, units , courses and time , all these entities have properties , for example
classes are linked to the subjects the students of a certain department are taught., usually
these entities are differentiated into resources and events (or sometimes called
meetings). In addition constrains have to be considered. Some of these links are fixed such as
units to be taken for a certain course , while other links have to assigned during a
planning process for example the time a specific class should be in progress or the class
or room to be used for a certain unit. A timetable can be interpreted as an arbitrary
sequence of events, a certain number of time intervals are assigned, each having a
starting and an ending point.
There are different resources whose instances have references to each other, for example an
instance of the subject class refers to instances of the teacher class who are able to teach that
subject. Moreover, there are entities with a certain property called events. This property is a
certain time interval (or several time intervals) that is assigned to these events.

2.2 Theoretical review

“Dipti Srinivasan Tian Hou Seow Jian Xin Xu” [1] proposed that finding a feasible
lecture/tutorial timetable in a large university department is a challenging problem faced
continually in educational establishments. This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm
(EA) based approach to solve a heavily constrained university timetabling problem. The
approach uses a problem-specific chromosome representation. Heuristics and context-based
reasoning have been used for obtaining feasible timetables in a reasonable computing time.
An intelligent adaptive mutation scheme has been employed for speeding up the convergence.
But this system is difficult to implement since it considers entire university problem and
evolutionary algorithm.
Antariksha Bhaduri “University Time Table Scheduling using Genetic Artificial Immune
Network” [2] in their article proposed that Scheduling is one of the important tasks
encountered in real life situations. Various scheduling problems are present, like personnel

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scheduling, production scheduling, education time table scheduling etc. Educational time
table scheduling is a difficult task because of the many constraints that are needed to be
satisfied in order to get a feasible solution. Education time table scheduling problem is known
to be NP Hard. Hence, evolutionary techniques have been used to solve the time table
scheduling problem. Methodologies like Genetic Algorithms(GAs), Evolutionary Algorithms
(EAs) etc. have been used with mixed success. In this paper, we have reviewed the problem
of educational time table scheduling and solving it with Genetic Algorithm. We have further
solved the problem with a mimetic hybrid algorithm, Genetic Artificial Immune Network
(GAIN) and compare the result with that obtained from GA. Results show that GAIN is able
to reach the optimal feasible solution faster than that of GA.
“Shengxiang Yang, Member, IEEE, and Sadaf Naseem Jat”[3] proposed that The university
course
timetabling problem (UCTP) is a combinatorial optimization problem, in which a set of
events has to be scheduled into time slots and located into suitable rooms. The design of
course timetables for academic institutions is a very difficult task because it is an NP-hard
problem. This paper investigates genetic algorithms (GAs) with a guided search strategy and
local search (LS) techniques for the UCTP. The guided search strategy which is used here is
to create offspring into the population based on a data structure that stores information
extracted from good individuals of previous generations. The LS techniques use their
exploitive search ability to improve the search efficiency of the proposed GAs and the quality
of individuals. The proposed GAs is tested on two sets of benchmark problems in comparison
with a set of state-of the- art methods from the literature. The experimental results show that
the proposed GAs is able to produce promising results for the UCTP.

2.3 Empirical/ conceptual review.

This system is implemented using the minimum hardware requirements like RAM 512MB
and above, hard disk used is 20GB or above, processor used is 2.4GHz or above, display is
standard output display and data input is keyboard/mouse. Software requirements deal with
defining software resource requirements and prerequisites that need to be installed on a
computer to provide optimal functioning of an application. These requirements or
prerequisites are generally not included in the software installation package and need to be
installed separately before the software is installed. Languages used are Java, HTML, CSS,
Database used is MYSQL, Compiler is Net Beans, Web server used here is Glass fish,
Operating system is Windows 7/8/10.

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2.4 Conceptual framework

2.4.1 Critic on the current method used for timetable generation

1. Creation of a timetable is a complex and time consuming task which involves laborious
paperwork. It needs hours of optimization to assign teachers and classrooms for periods.
Since this process is done manually it is prone to human error. This further affects the
productivity of the institution, where classes start 1week or more after the school opens, due
to confusion and mix-ups.
2. Timetable management involves a lot of paperwork. An institution with numerous classes
might need piles of papers just for timetables. Hence , storing and updating these records will
become incredibly difficult.
3. In the traditional system changes have to be announced by the lecturer via the class
representatives, which might sometimes lead to confusion on the students time and the
change will not consider other classes who might also have a class at that time and all that
confusion might lead to conflict.

2.4.2 Application areas of the system

The main application area which is the inspiration behind this project is an educational
institution , that is primary , secondary , colleges, universities and any other learning
institution. Other areas include:
1. Companies: for purposes of scheduling shifts and work load assignment, it will also cater
for when someone is on leave and automatically removes them from the scheduled timetable.
2. Personal use: the current method of generating a timetable does not consider the students
or staff on matters making it easy for them to identify their scheduling for the week , hence
the system allows them to extract only information useful to them and keeps the others off it
unless they ask for it . For instance a student can type in their name and course and get a fully
well arranged timetable for themselves.
3. Unbiased Revision Timetable for students: students can gain access to the system inform
of an application where they will provide a list of subjects or to do tasks and the
system
schedules it for them linking it with their performance hence coming up with
the most
suitable timetable arrangement for them.

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2.4.3 Advantage of the study

1. No more confusion- it is possible to create a timetable effectively, sticking by the

requirements. Timetable generation system generates timetables considering the limitations
such as availability of classes, teachers, rooms, units etc.
2. Automatic Timetable generation- no more spending hours figuring out the timetable for
each class. You just need to enter your criteria and within no time, you will get your timetable
generated without any hassle.
3. It is error free- when manually preparing a timetable, you tend to make errors. You may
end up with allotting two classes to one teacher at the same time. This system helps to avoid
such errors. In case of an error in the data you entered, timetable generation system detects
them and provide alternatives, thus helping you create an accurate timetable.
4. Easy Integration- The timetable of a school can be easily integrated with calendar
applications. And, you will be able to receive notifications via email, SMS alerts, and
reminders whenever the timetable gets modified or generated.
5. Easy Resource Allocation- with the help of a timetable generating system , you can assign
lecturers and lecture halls, and improve the task of resource allocation in other staff in the
best possible manner.
6. The proposed system is extensible- it can be extended to generate the timetable for as many
branches as required.

2.5 Conclusion

Learning institutions like universities are supposed to make timetables for each semester
which can be a tedious and pain staking job. Each lecturer and student is eligible for viewing
the final copy which is also tedious for them since they have to look for their courses and
units and compile their individual timetables by themselves. This timetable generation system
is a semi-automatic timetable scheduling software. It will be generating timetables that will
ensure the conflict free allocation of subjects assigned to various faculties , and lecturers and
students can also get their individual copies derived from the main timetable. The project
differentiates between users on the basis of their designation. Only the administrator will be
having the authority to create the timetable and faculties and students will only be viewing
the timetable. Another facility to export the generated timetable to Microsoft excel from
where it will be can be printed will also be provided.

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3.0 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Study area and research design

The main purpose of this study is to develop an automatic timetable generating system which
will make timetabling easier and faster.
This study will utilize the quasi-experimental, pretest, post-test, control group design. Quasi
experimental design is same as classic controlled experimental design except the style of
assigning subjects to two groups. In classic controlled experimental design, there is random
assignment. On the other hand, Quasi-experimental designs are commonly employed in the
evaluation of educational programs when random assignment of subjects to the two groups is
either not possible or not practical. Thus in a quasi-experimental design, the research
substitutes statistical controls for the absence of physical control of the experimental
situation. Moreover, Gall et al. (2003) explained, “Correlational research refers to studies in
which the purpose is to discover relationships between variables and subjecting the variables
to correlational and multiple regression analysis.
Data gathered will be computer-processed using the statistical package for the Social Science
(SPSS) Software. Descriptive statistical tools such as frequency count, mean, and standard
deviation will be employed. On the other hand, t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson r will be
used as inferential tests. All inferential tests will be used as inferential tests. All inferential
tests will be set at 0.05 alpha levels of significance. Troohim (2006) contends that quasi-
experimental design is one that looks a bit like an experimental design but lacks that key
ingredient –random assignment. The most common quasi experimental design is the
Comparison group Pretest-Post-test Design where the researcher cannot control which group
will get the treatment and participants do not all have the same chance of being in the control
or the experimental group. This design is appropriate factor or intervention. This is not pure
experimental method because the participants has no equal chance to be sampled as either
experimental or control rather assigned in each group, the two sections.

3.2 Target population

The targeted audience of this research is any Learning institution or organization that uses the
manual or automated timetable system. The targeted subjects are likely to have knowledge or
experience in doing or using the timetable system. Survey instrument packages consisting of
a cover letter, a questionnaire and a stamped reply envelope were mailed to the 2 universities
and 10 respondents from each university.

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3.3 Sample size

It was decided that the research method to be utilized would be mail surveys (Distribution of
questionnaires), e-mail surveys (distribution of questionnaires) and personal interviews. Data
will be collected from targeted samples through interview or questionnaire. Mail survey is
where the questionnaire is distributed to each individual in the sample by mail, with a request
that it be completed and then returned by a given date. Besides that, the researcher will also
conduct face-to face interviews with the selected respondent.

3.4 Sampling techniques

The survey instrument used two sets of questionnaires. The first set of questionnaire consists
of 4 sections designed for the student who is using the timetable in their university. The
second set of questionnaire consists of 6 sections, designed for the administrator or person
who is in-charge of the timetable system. The questionnaire is also used as the questions for
the face-to-face interview. The questionnaires were designed to understand the functionality
of the system in the selected universities and it covered a wide range of subjects and provides
a format for a large and quick data collection. Besides, it is a standard form of response,
reducing bias-ness, and finally allowing easier way for analysis. The first set of questionnaire
is developed for students and is divided into four main sections. The first section requested
general information about the respondent. The objective is to know the background of the
respondent. The second section is about the respondents’ perception of using the timetable
system for their registration subject of every semester. The objective of this section is to
know how user friendly of the system. The third section is about the functionality of the
timetable system and the objective is to get information on how the system is functioning.
The final section is for the respondents to give opinion or suggestion on their timetable. The
objective of this section is to get feedback from the respondents using the system; this is an
important section which will be included in development of Timetable Management System.
The second set of questionnaire is developed for the administrator or the person in charge of
the timetable of their university and is divided into six main sections. The first section
requested general information about the respondent. The objective is to know the background
of the respondent. The second section is about the system itself. The objective is to get
information on what programming languages were used and the interface of the system. The
third section inquired about the process of doing the timetable. The objective is to get
information on how the process is implemented. The fourth is the functionality of the system.

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The objective is to know how the timetable caters for the clashing of the subjects and how
friendly the system is. The fifth section inquired about the procedure in handling the clashing
of timetable. The objective is to get information on how every university handles the situation
when they have the problem. The final section is regarding the respondent’s perception on
how to improve or suggestion for their timetable system. The objective is to get feedback
from the respondents using the system.

3.5 Data collection methods

Three methods of distribution were used for the questionnaire:

_ Fax
_ E-mail
_ By hand (Personal)
All students with e-mail addresses received the questionnaires via this
medium. Alternatively, questionnaires were faxed or posted. Most of the
response received is via fax and email.

3.6 Analysis

The results from the questionnaires were initially entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
to allow for the easy generation of graphs and tables. Other software such as SPSS was not
used since all the data collected were descriptive data.

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REFERENCES

[1] Mosaic Space Blog, “The Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling” PATAT 2010,
Mosaic Space Blog, University and College planning and management retrieved, from
http://mosaicd.com/blog, 2011, Last accessed date 21st January 2012 .

[2] Antariksha Bhaduri “University Time Table Scheduling using Genetic Artificial Immune
Network” 2009 International Conference on Advances in Recent Technologies in
Communication and Computing.

[3] Khalid Shekar, Salwani Abdullah and Arwa Hatem,” A Differential Evolution Algorithm
for the University Course Timetabling Problem”, 2012 4th Conferencing on data mining and
optimization 02 04 September 2012.

[4] Dipti Srinivasan Tian Hou Seow Jian Xin Xu “Automated timetable generation using
multiple context reasoning for university models”, 2002 IEEE conference.

[5] hitoshi kanoh, Yuusuke sakamoto “Interactive timetabling system using knowledge based
genetic algorithm” , 2004 IEEE International conference on systems, man and cybernetics.

[6] Sadaf N. Jat, Shengxiang Yang “ A mimetic algorithm for university course timetabling
problem”, 2008 20th IEEE International conference on tools with artificial intelligence.

[7] Meysam Shahvali Kohshori, Mohammad saniee abadeh, Hedieh Sajedi “A fuzzy genetic
algorithm with local search for university course timetabling” 2008 20 th IEEE International
conference.

[8] D. G. Maere, (2010). “How Working Group Automated Timetabling was founded”,
retrieved from http://www.asap.ac.nott.ac.uk/, 2010, Last accessed date 9th December 2011.

[9] Bhadhuri a “University timetable scheduling”. Advance in recent technologies in

communication and computing. ARTCom ’09.International conference.

[10] Mohammed Azmi Al-Betar, Ahmad Tajudin khader,Osama Journal of Scientific &
Engineering Research Volume 9, Issue 4, April-2018 ISSN 2229-5518 Muslih, “A Multiswap
Algorithm for the university course Timetabling Problem”, 2012 international conference on
computer and information science.

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[11] AnujaChowdhary, PriyankaKakde, ShrutiDhoke, Sonali Ingle, RupalRushiya, Dinesh
Gawande “TIMETABLE GENERATION SYSTEM” A paper published in IJCSMC Vol.3,
Issue. 2, February 2014.

APPENDICES
SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE
STUDENTS
1) General Information
I. gender? Select your answer by a tick or cross
Male
female
intersex
non-binary
II. Faculty

2) I. Have you ever experienced any issues with the timetable provided by your institution
for example clashing of classes ? Select your answer by a tick or cross.
Yes
No
II. Would you say that the current way of timetable generation has a negative impact on how
you begin your semester, if yes how?

3) How would you rate your institution’s method of generating timetables be it for lectures
or examinations? (1 being very poor and 5 being excellent), circle your answer.
1 2 3 4 5
4) Do you think the institution should adopt another method of timetable generation? Select
your answer by a tick or cross.
Yes
No
Not sure

(Thank you for participating in this short survey, your feedback is highly appreciated )

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ADMINISTRATORS
1) General Information
I. gender? Select your answer by a tick or cross
Male
Female
Intersex
Non-binary
II. Faculty
2) I. Have you heard or read about the proposed system?
Yes
No
II. If your answer in 2)I) above is yes, what are your remarks on it?

III) Would you recommend the proposed system?

Yes
No
3) How would you rate the current method being used by the institution in the generation
of a timetable? (1 being very poor and 5 being excellent), circle your answer.
1 2 3 4 5
4) I. Do you face any challenges with the current method of timetable generation?
Yes
No
II. Do you think the proposed system will fix those challenges?
Yes
No
Not sure
5) Describe how the current system handles clashing of timetable and how you would
rather it handled it?

(Thank you for participating in this short survey, your feedback is highly appreciated )

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