Project Title: Surveying and Modelling Constraints in Timetabling Problems
Student: Andrew Clarke
Course: BSc Hons E-Commerce and Digital Business
	
Abstract:
The problem of university timetabling and it's solution is a heavily 
debated and well researched area in current academic circles. However 
this research to date has focused on the constraints, problems and 
solutions of staffing and university needs. The problems associated 
with student constraints or even what constraints affect student 
module choices, is an area that remains relatively untouched. 
This is an area that I feel is important. As a consequence of their 
needs being overlooked, students cannot, or simply choose not to, 
attend events, which in the long run affects the performance of 
both the student and the university. Therefore it is crucial that 
some if not all student constraints play at least some role in the 
future of university timetabling. This project aims to understand 
and identify student timetabling constraints through the use of 
research and a student survey. Once identified, the constraints 
are used to aid in the design of an automated scheduling tool 
that checks timetables against given student constraints. The 
benefits of such a solution are clear. They allow the user to enter 
these student constraints and immediately identify areas that are 
a cause of conflict. The solution has to edit and store constraints, 
take an input of a timetable and give a meaningful report on the 
timetables quality. This is where my program steps in; 
Constraint-Tabler is a Java based program for doing just that. 
It accepts XML file inputs using a given tag set and checks it 
against the user entered constraints. The constraints themselves 
are identified in the research and reflected in the design of the 
four 'key' entry types of constraint:- entry time, room, student, 
and location. The program generates a detailed text based report 
on the quality of the timetable and gives a grading in percentage 
form.