Abstract

1
The University Class Scheduler (U.C.S.) Deanna
Needell, Jeff Stuart, Tamara Thiel Dr. Sergiu
Dascalu, Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr. Department of
Computer Science, University of Nevada, Reno
Abstract The University Class Scheduler (U.C.S)
is an innovative scheduling tool. It is intended
to be used by major Universities to schedule
classes into classrooms, although it can easily
be adapted for general use outside the academic
realm. U.C.S. allows University administrators
to enter relevant college and building
information, schedule the input classes into the
input classrooms, and create web pages linking to
the appropriate University pages with the
scheduled class/classroom information. Scheduling
is done based on a wide variety of user-chosen
parameters. Thus U.C.S. is quite flexible to each
individual users needs. U.C.S. also comes with
a generic XML parser, allowing the program to
read and translate files it has stored.

• Future Extensions
• Suggest an optimal course of action for
  resolving
• scheduling conflicts
• Extend the scheduling capabilities to also
  schedule
• class times
• Include additional features that will make the
  UCS a
• more general scheduling system

Use Case Diagram The Use Case diagram depicts
the interactions between the staff, students,
and professors of the University and the
program. The staff of each department will
enter in the professor, college, building,
department, class, and classroom information.
Once this is done, the University
administrator will use the University Class
Scheduler to create the classroom schedule.
The University Catalog Creators will then use
the generated classroom schedule to create the
semester class catalog. The University
webmaster will post the web pages and the
generated schedule file to the Universitys
server. Then students and professors may view
and use those web pages.
Web Pages Output by U.C.S. Web Pages 1
Department Page Displays schedule of classes
in classrooms per department. Web Pages
2 Classroom Page Displays schedule of classes
in a classroom
Add Class The most important of the user
interfaces provides a means for entering class
information. Because the structure of classes at
different Universities varies, this component
allows for flexibility. It allows the user to
subdivide classes into lectures and labs,
manually restrict lab locations, enter different
class times on different days, and provide other
mechanisms to distinguish classes of different
types.

• Main Characteristics / Components 
• The University Class Scheduler will consist
  primarily of two components 
• The first component is used by the administrators
  of the University. This component allows the
  administrator of each University department to
  enter in, either manually or from a file, the
  departments classes, times, and professors. The
  program then saves this information. Next, this
  component schedules the input classes into
  classrooms without overlap based on various
  constraints and parameters set by the user. Such
  constraints may be classroom size, distance from
  department, and room features.  
• Once the scheduling is complete, the program
  creates a Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) file
  based on the users parameters. This file
  embodies the second component of the program, and
  will be used by students. It consists of a list
  of classes and contains appropriate links to the
  Universitys online map system, as well as
  professor and department home pages. 
• The University Class Scheduler is written in
  C, and its interfaces are implemented using the
  QT Non-Commercial Toolkit. It stores all files
  used by the program in XML format.

Schedule User can set parameters that U.C.S.
needs to consider when scheduling classes into
classrooms. Once all the parameters are set,
and the user selects the Schedule button,
U.C.S. puts the classes into available
classrooms. If no complete schedule can be
created, the user is notified and must resolve
the conflict. Once scheduling is complete, the
user can create web pages to enable students
to view the data.
Information For additional information, please
visit our web site at http//www.cs.unr.edu/
Needell/cs426/
This project was developed as part of the Senior
Projects course CS426, Instructor Dr. Sergiu
Dascalu, Spring 2003