A college timetable is a temporal arrangement of a set of classes and classrooms which all given constraints are satisfied. Time-tabling has long been known to belong to the class of problems called NP-hard. This paper introduces a real-time timetabling algorithm capable of taking care of both strong and weak constraints effectively, used in an automated timetabling system for examination invigilators scheduling. The world is advancing rapidly day-in-day-out in its approach to solve different tasks. This has led to various inventions, which are aimed at obtaining a maximum output at a minimum time in the academic sector.
Technology advancements led to the invention of computers, which have now become problem solving tool in various organizations, schools, private sector, government ect. Before the introduction of computer and other technology advancement tools, most jobs were either done manually or mechanically and this led to wastage of precious time, resources and efforts, some task are done repeatedly using the same procedures which led to the slow pace and delay in getting job done in good time.
Even though most administrative college works is computerized, the lecture-timetable scheduling is still mostly done manually due to inherent difficulties. The manual lecture-timetable scheduling demands considerable time and efforts. The lecture-timetable scheduling is a constraint satisfaction problem in which we find a solution that satisfies the given set of constraints.
The college lecture-timetabling problem asks us to find some time slots and classrooms, which satisfy the constraints imposed on offered courses, instructors, classrooms, and so on. Therefore, the variables to be instantiated are time slots and classrooms of offered courses. Since the problem is a combinatorial optimization problem belonging to NP-hard class, the computation time for timetabling tends to grow exponentially as the number of variables gets larger.
There have been number of approaches made in the past decades to the problem of constructing timetables for colleges and schools. Timetabling problems may be solved by different methods inherited from operations research such as graph colouring and mathematical programming, from local search such as procedures such as tabu search and simulated annealing, from genetic algorithms or from backtracking-based constraint satisfaction manipulation.
The use of computer system has contributed to a tremendous growth in production and management in everyday life business and commercial services even in our various private works, the manual method of generating invigilators timetable cannot be compared with the use of computerized approached, as with all manually process and inefficient.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
It is well understood that every automated operations are preceded by manual operations, but in the reverse all automated operation supersedes the manual operations in all ramifications including efficiency and accuracy.
The decision for the development of examination invigilators’ timetable generation and scheduling system for the Institute of Basic and Applied Sciences – IBAS was prior to personal observation of the problems and difficulties encountered in scheduling invigilator’s duty during examination period.
1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this project is to computerize the existing method of generating invigilator’s timetable process by minimizing time waste, inaccuracy, and lots of energy consumed in scheduling lecturers to invigilate students in different examination halls. The objectives of the project are as follows:
The project will help a lot in assisting schools to carryout their supervision in an orderly and accurate forms, a fully implemented computerization of invigilator’s timetable over the manual system is reliable. It is also recognizes that, the project represents the new system is of the following importance;
This project work covers developing a computer based system that transform the existing system into a digital system for more accuracy and efficiency in scheduling examination invigilators’ timetable. The project is limited to developing re will be limitation into some aspect of the system and the area in the program which cannot be applied to any other department’s unless with through modification since the number courses, course code offered by other department are different also the department lecturer’s details and number are different too.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL TERMS
Lecturer: A person who lectures or takes to a group of people on a subject especially in higher institution like university, polytechnic or colleges.
Timetable: An organized set of period or phase of time that is designed in such a way to help monitor events or planned program.
Computerization: It is the process by which computer has been used to solve problems facing in manual method.
Invigilator: A person assigned to supersede or watch people while they are taking an exam to make sure that they have everything they need, that they keep to the rules and regulation guiding the examination.
1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
This is the overall organizational structure of the work as presented in this project. Chapter one of this project deals with the general introduction to the work in the project. It also entails the aims and objectives of this project, the significance of the study, the methods used for data collection, the scope and limitation of the study.
Chapter two deals with the literature review, historical development of the case study, computerization current state of the art and discussion of related aspect of the project topic relative to computer technology.
Chapter three covers the analysis of the existing system, description of the current procedure, problems of existing system (procedure) itemized, description of the proposed system and the basic advantages of the proposed web based application for library management.
Chapter four entails design, implementation and documentation of the system. The design involves the system design, output design form, input design form, database structure and the procedure of the system. The implementation involves the implementation techniques used in details, choice of programming language used and the hardware and software support. The documentation of the system involves the operation of the system and the maintenance of the system. Chapter five deal with summary, conclusion, recommendation and references.