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A web app that helps UofT students plan their courses to generate their optimal timetable.
The timetable planner allows students to enter their course load and get back a timetable that fits their needs. The vision for the timetable planner includes taking student preferences into account such as:
- How early students wish to start and end classes
- What days students would like to take off
- What times students would prefer gap time and breaks
Once the user selects the courses from the Course Guide:
The user views the timetable:
The timetable will display whether or not if the selected courses have a valid time, that is no conflict for all courses.
- Valid:
- Invalid:
There are serveral preferences that the user can select to optimize the timetable:
- Minimize/Maximize idle time: The user can maximize or minimize the gap time between courses.
- Days off: The user can select the day(s) off so there will be no course appear on that day.
- Avoid Morning/Evening Class: The user can choose whether if they want to have courses in the morning or evening.
The timetable will return invalid and displays a message if the constraints are unreachable.
The user can also choose to lock certain course times.
When preferences are made, those times will not be changed.
after a course is locked and a preference is being made:
The timetable algorithm takes in a set of course names and transforms into a list of timetables. Then the user can optimize the timetable to fit their preference.
The algorithm starts out by checking if the given sections conflict with each other. The algorithm will return true or false depending on whether or not a conflict exists.
After checking for basic validity, we can optimize our timetable by adding constraints to it.
The algorithm then takes in an invalid time argument that inputs from the user's preference times off.
The algorithm then implements an idle time function which takes in a set of valid timetable and returns the max and the min idle time depend on the user's preference.
The algorithm then stores the user's locked courses in a list which will stay in position despite future optimization.
Before any optimization, the algorithm checks if it is possible to make a timetable out of the given courses by checking the conflict between the course times.
Pseudocode
/**
*
* @param timetable: A map of day to timeSections
{"MONDAY": [time_sections], ...}
*
*/
function overlap(timetable){
for day in timetable
if the times of the day overlaps each other
return false
return true
}The user can input their desired times off, such as day off or morning/evening off, the algorithm reruns the conflict check and returns valid timetable with the invalid times.
Psedocode
/**
*
* @param courseList: A list of course sections
{"CSC108H5FLEC0101": {"MONDAY":[Time Section], ...}, ...}
* @param timesOff: A map of day to TimeSections of times off
{"MONDAY":[Time Sections], ...}
*
*/
function bucketCourseByDay(courseList, timesOff){
for course in courseList
append course to timetable
for timesOffBlock in timesOff
append timesOffBlock to timetable
check if valid or not by overlap function
}The user can choose to maximize or minimize their idle time at school, which is the time gaps between classes each day. The algorithm compares the total idle time in each timetable given and returns the user's preference.
Pseudocode
/**
*
* @param setTimetable: A list of timetable
[{"MONDAY":[Time Sections], ...}]
* @param maxOrMin: A string
"MAX"/"MIN"
*
*/
function idleTime(setTimetable, maxOrMin){
for timetable in setTimetable
sum up all the idle time and store the index
check for the max and min of the idletimes
return based on maxOrMin
}The user can lock the section(s) they prefer to stay the same while processing other optimizations. The algorithm stores the locked section in a list, when processing other optimization, the list is being compared and put in to the new timetable to ensure timetable includes the locked section.