Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Enrolment serves as a vital part in the life of every student upon
entering college or universities, either public or in private. It gives
students the impression on how the whole institution manages and
manipulates the entire body. Enrolment is considered as the first step or
procedure that must be done by a student within a particular institution
before the semester per school year totally starts. Good enrolment is
always an asset in a college or university, pertaining to fast payment,
assessment procedures, and easy transactions with a high rate of
accuracy. Therefore, good enrolment within the college or university, if
present, can be described as civilize, organize, accurate and professional
(Ting, 2010).
Moreover, to ensure a good studying experience in the college, an
organized schedule must take into consideration.
Course/Subject scheduling is considered to be an integral part of
an
educational
institution
or
in
the
enrollment
process.
Also,
timetable that the students will follow during a given term. It acts as a
traffic enforcer so that students wont have contradicting or opposing
subject schedules and it help in maximizing the use of s12chool facilities
and rooms everyday while avoiding conflict of schedules (jybrielle, 2012).
In the early 90s, PIMSAT Colleges handles not more than 100 students enrolled
at Maritime and other allied courses offered by the college. In the succeeding years,
rapid growth of student enrolled with more Programs offered by the
college. Currently, PIMSAT Colleges class scheduling is done manually
which includes activities such as organizing and planning the schedule
for the faculty member workload and the sections that they will instruct,
and also the schedule for each section in all the subjects and its
preferred timeslot. All these resources must be efficiently and wisely
matched for best utilization.
The
conflicts
that
the
Deans/Department
Heads
normally
Process involves the SDLC to use. State the SDLC, its phases,
Existing
process
adopted to develop a project and not surprisingly, this project
Manual
Process
PIMSAT ACS
will follow this model too. To be precise, waterfall model is being applied.
Specifically in:
Scheduling
Planning
Designin
Testing
Analyzing
Coding
Figure 1
Research Paradigm of
PIMSAT Automated Course Scheduler
(PIMSAT ACS)
given
quarter.
To
facilitate
students
program
planning,
class
Plant
Custodians.
The
ACS
provides
better
Login Module; User Access Levels; Report Generation for Class Schedule,
Instructor's Schedule, and Room Loading Schedule.
The system will only cover the automation of the scheduling
process being implemented by PIMSAT Colleges and will end at the
generation of its corresponding reports. The system will also not include
a direct connection to Internet for the uploading of the generated
schedule to be used for the enrollment process as the developers are not
permitted to access or modify it.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
To have better understanding of the terms used in this context, the
following terminologies are defined:
Academic Load refers to the number of classes or hours spent in
class a person (Faculty Member and Student) takes / has.
Automate a general technology term used to describe any
process of performing a task through the use of computers
and
computer
intervention.
software
that
requires
less
human
Chapter 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
CHAP 2 (Follow these guidelines)
Present only related LITERATURES [to the specific subtopic] from
books, journals, internet articles and white papers from the internet. There
should be NO numberings or bulleted formats; all are presented in
paragraphs. Subtitles include:
Processes Involved in the Traditional Scheduling Systems
Class
Schedule.
__________________________________________________
________________________________________
Room Schedule. __________________________________________________
________________________________________
Faculty Load. ___________________________________________________
________________________________________
Functional and Non-functional Requirements of an Automated Scheduling
System
Hardware and Software Requirements of an Automated Scheduling
System
simplest
heuristic
of
making
sequential
assignments
while
with faculty preference. During the process Workload Teaching Units that
are assigned to each faculty are tracked manually to ensure each faculty
load has an acceptable load. If there isnt any of the typical faculty
available to teach a course then the scheduler refers to the preference
matrix to look for an alternate option. This situation often occurs when a
faculty member goes on sabbatical or other type of leave. Sometimes it is
can be a challenge to shift courses around so that the assignment is
acceptable.
Once the assignment is complete, the scheduler reviews the WTU
and manually inputs the schedule into a spreadsheet to create a WTU
and assignment report to review with chair and faculty members. If any
changes are necessary, the scheduler shifts assignments around until an
acceptable assignment is agreed upon.
One downside of this manual approach is that since it is a manual
process, it is potentially susceptible to human error and unbalanced
preferences. Often the assignment is not created to maximize and
balance preferences across the department. Because it is difficult to
manually maximize total preference for the department sometimes the
most particular faculty members might get their perfect assignment while
the faculty members who have historically been the most adaptable and
flexible are often the first ones assigned to a much less preferred course.
There are often situations where courses need to be shifted around to
avoid assigning a very undesirable course to a faculty member. When
these shifts need to take place the manual approach cannot evaluate all
the alternatives. Stepping away from the particular department studied,
another potential downside of the manual assignment approach in
general is the vulnerability to bias and personal preferences of the
individual creating the manual assignment. In a manual approach, the
scheduler ultimately has a lot of power and control over the department.
The course assignments have a huge impact on faculty members lives
and job satisfaction as well as students.
Scheduling
Once each course has been assigned to a faculty member, the
schedule is created to assign a timeslot to each course. The current
process of creating the timetable is a 13 paper based scheduling
lab,
each
faculty,
each
upper
division
course
level,
and
manufacturing courses.
Once the schedule forms are created, the scheduler starts the
scheduling process. The scheduler typically begins with the most
constrained courses and faculty and places those first since they have
the least flexibility. Next, labs are placed primarily on Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday to leave Tuesday and Thursday mostly open for
80 minute lecture timeslots. The scheduler relies on the previous years
schedule as a guideline for the course timetable. Prior to placing any
course on the timetable, the scheduler verifies the availability of the
timeslot and tries to ensure there arent any conflicts with other courses
at the same level, room conflicts or faculty availability conflicts. The
timeslot should also fit in with the university defined timeslots. As each
course is placed on the timetable, the scheduler marks it on the
appropriate faculty member sheet, the course level sheet, and the lab
room sheet as needed.
With an eraser close at hand, the scheduler repeats this iterative
process with one course at a time and each time trying to schedule the
next most constrained course. Since the process is very iterative, there
are changes along the way that trickle down and impact several courses.
As this happens, the scheduler might either start over, shift courses
around, or compromise and allow a conflict of some sort.
The biggest downside of the manual scheduling approach is that
the scheduler cannot look at every combination of schedules and
evaluate which one is best. Since the scheduler cannot look at every
combination, it is likely that an overlap in courses is necessary in order
to schedule all the courses into the timetable. Some quarters might work
out with minimal overlap at the class level; however other quarters result
in overlaps in critical courses. These overlaps impact the students ability
to take their 15 desired courses.
Functional and Nonfunctional Requirements of Course Scheduling
System
Functional Requirements
Murray
Chapter 3
METHODOLOGY
Research Design
Proper citation per paragraph.
The developer utilized the descriptive-developmental research
methodology. It was paired with the SDLC. To be precise, waterfall model
is being applied.
Analysis
Phase.
Discussion
of
the
phase.
Coding
Testing
green light to proceed. This is where the proposal submission comes into
picture.
Phase 2- Analyzing. Gathering and analyzing the system and user
requirements is essential for entry to the design step. With the user
requirements gathering completed, there is a need to prepare the
resources for the project. Be it software or hardware components, careful
consideration and selection is to be taken care at this stage. The decision
on the appropriate resources to be used is further elaborated under the
subsections below.
Phase 3- Designing. Design the system and database structure.
Results from the analysis and preparation that were concluded from the
previous stage are put into action. With the user requirements in mind,
the flow of the system is planned and the user interface is designed
to suit their easy navigation needs. In addition, the number of tables,
attributes, primary and unique keys of the database is listed. After
completing the design, actual coding begins.
Phase 4- Coding. Database is created and codes are written. Some
of the codes required amendments and improvement to it so these are
being developed at this fourth stage of the waterfall model. With the
development completed, testing will begin.
Phase 5- Testing. The codes and database are tested to ensure
the results obtained are as intended. More time is spent on both
development and testing stages because it is inevitable to have errors and
issues and buffer time is allocated for troubleshooting.
Sources of Data
The primary sources of data in the design and development of the
system were the information derived from observation and structured
interviews with VP for Academic Affairs, the HRDO and the Deans and
Program Heads of College of different Programs of PIMSAT Colleges.
Similarly, as secondary sources of data, the developer made use of
books, electronic journals, and the Internet. An analysis of existing
projects was also undertaken.
Instrumentation and Data Collection
A range of techniques were used to classify the requirements of the
system.
These
techniques
were
important
in
gathering
various
developments.
These
techniques
include
observation,