Design and development of a user-centered design University Load Scheduling System

Scheduling of faculty and student load is a common challenge in any university. A person is usually assigned to do this for a department which in the case of De La Salle University, the Vice-Chair of the department. The task is made complicated by constraints such as: time preference of professors, blocking of students, availability resources, and adherence to existing University policies. In a survey conducted among Vice-Chairs, it was adherence to existing University policies. In a survey conducted among Vice-Chair, it was learned that it takes at least three days to produce preliminary schedule for professors and students. This preliminary schedule is changed several times before the term starts because of the dynamic nature of the online enrollment system. In order to minimize the challenge of faculty and student scheduling an interactive scheduling web application was created. The application aims to minimize the time that the Vice Chair spends in making the schedule, satisfy the needs of the department customers, and minimize the error that are constantly faced in the manual scheduling process. The design of the web application was done considering the Software Development Life Cycle and Web Application Development Life Cycle approaches. Although some concepts overlap, the two approaches were considered to endure the comprehensiveness of the study. In the design phase, two design philosophies were utilized namely, the user-centered design approach and the interactive design approach. The user-centered design approach to which the application will be designed for have particular needs and wants. On the other hand, the interaction design approach was also used as it caters to the characteristics of the project being digital in nature. Both design philosophies were deemed significant to use in the design phase. Aside from both approaches, there were also design considerations that were addressed through Knowledge-Based Management Systems, Methods Engineering, and Cognitive Ergonomics. The application was designed to mimic the way seasoned Vice-Chairs create the term schedule. Best practices of the seasoned Vice-Chairs were identified in order to create the functions of the application. The application was developed using the Python Programming Language. The basic function of the application is to automatically assign timeslots for subjects offered the succeeding term, in assigning these timeslots however, the daily schedules of professors, student block sections and repeater sections for the term are taken into consideration. The application tries to create the most plausible schedule for professors and students based upon faculty time preferences, perceived best schedule for students, and university policies. When the application has finished the scheduling task, the user may still edit the generated output in order to conform to preferences, and adapt to changes and developments during the online enrollment or any other event that may affect the schedule for the succeeding term. On the other hand, users may opt to create schedules themselves with the guidance of the schedule error-checking function of the application so as to minimize mistakes in the schedule such as resource usage conflicts, redundancies, and the like, this function may also be used together with the auto generate schedule functions of the application would create schedules for subjects without timeslots. The finalized schedule may be saved by the user and may also be locked so that it would be identified as the final output. This output can be saved in the application database or a PDF file format of the output may be downloaded from the web application. The evaluation of the created schedule may be addressed in the application. The evaluation of the created schedule may be accessed in the application report page the schedule is evaluated in terms of its closeness to faculty preferences and how favorable the student schedule is, speed in crating the schedule, and room utilization. Through this web application, Vice-Chairs of academic departments in De La Salle University would be able to complete the term schedule faster, easier, and with less mental workload furthermore, they are assured that he greatest effort was exerted to ensure that a considerably good schedule was created. The study is a first of its kind in the university, thus it identifies the difficulties and problems in creating the term schedule that may be addressed by policy improvements and/or automation. Automation plays an integral part in preserving information accuracy and integrity, the study presents a tool that can potentially help in automation goal of the university