1. Team 20 Advisor Dr. John Keenan 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Abstract Course scheduling is an integral part of the college experience. At the University of Pennsylvania, students have the opportunity to choose from 600 courses across 120 departments. Although the breadth and depth of course offerings is a true benefit of the university, students face difficulty in scheduling their courses. The existing tools that students use to complete this process are not user-friendly, and information must be manually gathered from various online applications. The objective of this project is to integrate the various course scheduling tools at the University of Pennsylvania with an interactive and easy-to-use interface. Time efficiency is also an important goal, and with this single platform, course scheduling is a faster and more convenient process. The approach of this project is to develop a web-based application. This system allows students to input their preferences by responding to successive queries. With these constraints, the scheduling program draws information from the Course Registrar and Penn Course Review databases to generate a set of schedules. The test launch of the application demonstrated that with the Penn Schedule Assembler, students are able to schedule their courses in about one fifth of the time that it takes using current methods. The test results also showed that students highly rated the integration of the different scheduling tools and the interface of the application. This application has met the needs of the Penn student body by efficiently solving the most glaring issues of the course scheduling process. Problem Statement At Penn, the process of choosing courses remains both time- consuming and tedious due to a lack of integration between the various tools used to schedule courses. Although some partial solutions have been developed, a complete application that addresses scheduling is missing. A survey of 40 students at Penn indicated the characteristics that users desire in a new application. First, students want a program that integrates the various tools used to schedule courses into one platform. Second, students want to shorten the amount of time they spend on scheduling courses. Finally, students maintain that a solution should be built upon an easy-to-understand interface. Problem Goals As per the problem statement, the goals of the application are: 1.To develop an interactive system that allows students to efficiently schedule their courses. 2.To integrate the different resources designed to help students in choosing courses into one system. 3.To enable students to find their optimal choice of courses in a maximum of 30 minutes Solution We built an application which integrates the three platforms used for course scheduling: Course Registrar, Penn Course Review, and Course Planning Guide. This application should be available online to enable easy access for all Penn students. Our solution allows students to input specific course constraints, timing preferences, and requirements they seek to satisfy. The system outputs the schedules that fit the student’s constraints. The application has a simple user interface, allowing users to not only save time when selecting their courses, but also to enjoy the process of planning their courses at Penn. Application Flow Diagram Conclusion The application allows students to schedule courses in a fifth of the time that it takes using current methods, while also providing greater integration across the various tools used to schedule courses. Students found the application easy to use and they provided glowing comments on the filtering of requirements by Penn Course Review data. Every surveyed student noted that he or she would use such an application if it were available to them. The application was successfully able to realize all of the goals of the project. Results Aditya Jayanthi ESE ‘12 Madhav Nandipati ESE’ ’12 Khaled Saad ESE ‘12 Arshan Vakil ESE ‘12 Create Combos of Sections Requirement Constraints? Decision Node Algorithm Inputs Algorithmic ImplementationTest Launch Results We tested our application on 40 students, who noted the time it took to schedule courses and rated (on a scale from 1 to 5) the integration of the tools and the interface of the application. The application allows students to schedule courses 77 minutes faster than before (see Figure 3). Students positively rated the application both as having greater integration across the various tools that are used to schedule courses, as well as having an easier-to-use interface (see Table 1). Add Combos of Section Requirements Timing Constraints? Delete Conflicting Combos Display Schedules Delete Overlapping Combos Yes No Scheduling Algorithm We tested two methods to implement the scheduling algorithm: 1x (applying the timing constraints only once) and 2x (applying the timing constraints twice). For our final design, we chose to use the 2x method because it was both faster (see Figure 1) and required less memory (see Figure 2). Speed was measured based on how long it took to create the schedule, and the 2x method is 26% faster. Memory was measured based on the maximum size of the array of section combinations, and the 2x method requires 36% less memory. Choose Requirements Specify PCR Metrics Add Another Requirement? Yes No Share Course? Input Sharecode Delete Non- Overlapping Schedules Display Final Schedules Share Another Course? Yes No Yes No Add Course Constraint? Yes Search for Course Add Course as Constraint Add Another Course? Yes Add Timing Constraint? No Yes Input Day and Time Overlap with Other Timings? Join Timing Preferences Yes No Add Another Timing Constraint? Yes No Course Constraints Timing Constraints Requirement Constraints Schedule Sharing No Team 17 Advisor: Dr. Jan Van der Spiegel University of Pennsylvania Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering ESE Senior Design Demo Times Thursday, April 19 th, 2012 9:00 am – 9:30 am, 10:00 am – 10:30 am 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Without App With App Integration of Tools 1.54.5 Interface0.54 Table 1 – Ratings from Survey (0 to 5) Add Requirement Constraint?