Lecture Scheduler

About

Lecture Scheduler is a timetable generator for university departments, that allots course lectures/classes to periods across the weekdays in a conflict-free manner i.e. no two classes scheduled at the same time will belong to same section or same teacher. It takes in a list of classes to be scheduled in CSV file format that includes course name, teacher name, and section. It then allots the lectures/classes to various timeslots (day, period) such that minimum number of periods are used in total. The scheduler can optionally also take input for course-class's preferred timeslots and priority of allocation. Moreover, it can also take in teacher-specific timeslot constraints as another CSV file, and ensure these constraints are met.

The files are processed on your local machine. Hence, all data remains private. The scheduler uses a fast and efficient algorithm that can sometimes produce sub-optimal results i.e. the schedule generated can possibly contain more periods than required. This can specifically occur when preferred_slots feature is used. However, in most scenarios, the generated schedule is near-perfect. Manual corrections can be made to make it perfectly optimal. Future plans include using a perfectly optimal complex algorithm.

Developed by @aikTamseel. Please share your feedback here.

Instructions

Provide following information in the panel above and click Generate Schedule. You can also check out the video tutorial.

• Weekdays: Enter the no. of days in which lectures will be held
• Rooms: Enter maximum no. of lectures that can be held in one timeslot. Leave empty if no such constraint.
• Courses: Upload a .CSV file in which each course class is represented in a separate row. (Note: If two or more sections will take same course separately, then they will be considered two separate course classes, but if they are taking the class together then it will be considered once course class.) Download this course.csv file for reference. The .CSV file should contain following columns:
  • course: name of the course
  • teacher: name of teacher (make sure to use same spellings everywhere)
  • section: name of the section (if more than one sections will take the class together then enter name of each section separated by comma e.g. BS2M, BS2R)
  • lectures: (optional) no. of lectures in one week
  • slots: (optional) preferred timeslots for the class. Type it as day.period separated by commas e.g.
    2.1 represents 1^st period on 2^nd day
    1.1,2.1,3.1 represents 1^st period on 1-3 days
• Teacher Unavailability (optional): Upload a .CSV file containing teacher and their unavailable timeslots. Download this unavailability.csv file for reference. The .CSV file should contain following columns:
  • teacher: name of the teacher (make sure to use same spellings as used in other file)
  • slots: timeslot(s) on which teacher is unavailable. Type it as day.period separated by commas e.g.
    2.1 represents 1^st period on 2^nd day
    1.1,2.1,3.1 represents 1^st period on 1-3 days