UniTime is a cross platform comprehensive educational scheduling system that supports developing course and exam timetables, managing changes to these timetables, sharing rooms with other events, and scheduling students to individual classes.
Software Santa's Note: This is BEST Used for Schools or Organizations that have an Intranet or a Web Server with PHP available to them. If you wish to install it on a single computer and run it "locally" from the Web Browser of Choice on that one computer you must go get and install XAMPP on that computer first. Comprehensive University Timetabling System
UniTime is a comprehensive educational scheduling system that supports developing course and exam timetables, managing changes to these timetables, sharing rooms with other events, and scheduling students to individual classes. It is a distributed system that allows multiple university and departmental schedule managers to coordinate efforts to build and modify a schedule that meets their diverse organizational needs while allowing for minimization of student course conflicts. It can be used alone to create and maintain a school's schedule of classes and/or exams, or interfaced with an existing student information system.
The system was originally developed as a collaborative effort by faculty, students, and staff at universities in North America and Europe. The software is distributed free under an open source license (GNU General Public License) in hopes that other colleges and universities can benefit their students through better scheduling or wish to contribute to ongoing research in this area.
Components:
Course Timetabling & Management
Examination Timetabling
Event Management
Student Scheduling
System Highlights
Publicly available
Open source (GNU GPL)
Server-client application with web-based interface
Platform independent (implemented using Java J2EE, and SQL database)
Covers all university timetabling needs
Course timetabling, student sectioning, examination timetabling, and event management
Distributed
Allows decomposition into several timetabling problems if desired
Provides distributed management and coordination across multiple organizational units
Accommodates competitive behavior
Applications
Timetabling system successfully applied in practice at Purdue University
Large university-wide problem
9,000 classes, 570 rooms
2,400 examinations, 39,000 students
190,000 course requests
Allows interactive changes
Can be used in modes ranging from manual data entry to fully automated timetabling
Extensible & Customizable
Applicable to a variety of university timetabling problems
System architecture
Data Entry
User interface provides an easy and intuitive means of data entry.
Preferences and requirements can be set on various levels of the course structure.
Classes are organized in a visual representation of the course structure. Preferences and requirements can be set at multiple levels.
Problem model and constraints consider complexity of all university courses.
Solver
Constraint Solver Library
Local search based framework using constraint programming primitives
Publicly available (GNU LGPL)
Winner of two tracks of International Timetabling Competition 2007 (finalist in all three tracks)
Applicable to a variety of constraint satisfaction and optimization problems
Identifies any inconsistencies and potential problems in input data
Timetabling solver can provide a fully automated solution.
It also allows for interactive changes while providing suggestions.
Student Sectioning
Students request courses. Class assignments are optimized respecting course structure, reservations, and student preferences.
Batch Sectioning
Once a timetable is created, pre-registered students are immediately enrolled to the most suitable classes
Online Sectioning
Additional student registrations and change requests are made online with schedules available immediately
Sample comparison: Average number of choices available per course request during sectioning (online v. student self-schedule).
Dynamic reservations protect course availability, allowing slightly fewer choices, but resulting in considerably less unmet course demand
For more information...
Visit our web-site at http://www.unitime.org
Software available for download
University Timetabling Application
Constraint Solver Library
Online documentation
Application demo
Ongoing research
Publications & presentations
Benchmark real-life data sets
Application support
Both free (via email) or commercial support is available
Installation, configuration, maintenance, customization, training, etc.
Collaboration on interesting timetabling problems
http://www.unitime.org/