Course Scheduling as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem

This paper describes a scheduling system to fulfill the timetabling needs of the Computer Science program at Florida Institute of Technology. The system handles both general constraints of timetabling problems and constraints specific to our problem. It has the flexibility of allowing for either manual or automatic assignments. The scheduling process is split into two phases; each phase is modeled as a CSP. The first phase tackles resource allocation which is, in our case, the problem of assigning faculty to courses. The second phase tackles the problem of assigning consistent time slots to courses. Optimization techniques are used in both phases. The first phase optimizes faculty assignment to courses in terms of faculty preferences. The second phase optimizes time slot assignment in terms of differences with previous term. The main goal of the system is to provide high quality timetables to the Computer Science program with as little delay as possible. This goal was fulfilled as expe..