AN INTERACTIVE APPROACH TO EXAMINATION TIMETABLING

An interactive approach to examination timetable construction has been developed at the University of Calgary. The resulting system, which r uns on a PC, has two stages. The first stages uses mathematical method s to create a timetable which 1) is conflict-free, 2) uses the minimum number of periods, and 3) is student-oriented in that it makes every effort to minimize the number of students who have multiple exams on t he same day. The second stage is interactive; it displays enough infor mation to allow the examinations officer to make changes to accommodat e late requests and special circumstances. Though under continuing dev elopment, the system has already proved very powerful and highly usabl e.