EMS - AN EXAMINATION SCHEDULING AND MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM

Scheduling final examinations for a university with different requirem ents is a tedious and laborious task. This paper describes an expert s ystem called Examination Management System (EMS) which can complete th e scheduling very efficiently In EMS we select the most difficult-to-s chedule examination as a candidate for the next scheduling step. When the scheduling process cannot proceed any further for lack of time or room, the system releases the resources occupied by the easiest-to-sch edule examinations (among the scheduled) and assigns them to the exami nation currently under consideration Some statistical learning methods are applied to dynamically change the focus among the considerations for the requirements or constraints such as direct conflicts and room capacity. Any requirements and expertise can be easily added into or r emoved from the system, but some trivial ad hoc requirements are neede d to be handled in the pre-scheduling part. EMS has been used successf ully for two local universities with much rime saving and quality impr ovement. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.