Class Assignment Properties

Each class assignment has properties displayed in various screens (for example, in Assigned Classes). All the displayed properties are described here, not only the properties displayed in the simplified mode.

• Class
  • Subject area, course number, instructional type and class number within that type (for example, ECET 107 Lab 1)
• Date
  • Date pattern for a given class (for example, Full Term)
• Time
  • Assigned time
• Room
  • Assigned room(s)
• Instructor
  •   An instructor(s) for the class for whom conflict checking is performed
    • Note: If there is an instructor assigned to a class for whom conflict checking is not required, the person will not be displayed here (the person is not taken into account during timetabling at all)
• Students or Std
  • Change in the number of student conflicts caused by this assignment

The additional properties in case when the simplified mode is not used are

• Time (Tm)
  • Change in penalty for unmet time preferences caused by this assignment
    • This is a difference between the best possible time assignment and the currently assigned time
• Room (Rm)
  • Change in penalty for unmet room preferences caused by this assignment
    • This is a difference between the best possible room assignment and the currently assigned room(s)
• Distribution Preferences (Gr - Group Constraints)
  • Change in penalty for unmet distribution preferences
    • Weight of the distribution preferences that the class is involved in that are not satisfied
• Back-to-back instructor preferences (Ins)
  • Change in penalty for unmet back-to-back instructor preferences caused by this assignment
    • It is discouraged for an instructor to teach two classes that are back-to-back and placed in different buildings (distance>0)
    • It is strongly discouraged for an instructor to teach two classes that are back-to-back and placed in rooms that are more than 50 meters apart
    • It is prohibited to assign two classes that are taught by the same instructor back-to-back to rooms that are more than 250 meters apart
      • The last criterion can be ignored for a particular instructor, see Edit Instructor page, Ignore Too Far toggle
      • These instructor back-to-back distance constants can be changed in the solver configuration, see Solver Configurations page
• Useless half-hours (Usl)
  • Change in the effectiveness of using time
    • There is a strongly discouraged penalty for leaving unoccupied time windows that are 30 minute long (or less) in the rooms
    • There is a discouraged penalty for using times that are breaking standard Tuesday-Thursday and Monday-Wednesday-Friday time patterns (e.g., if the Monday and Wednesday time is occupied, but Friday is left unoccupied)
• Too big rooms (Big)
  • Change in penalty for using rooms which are too large
    • It is discouraged to use a room that is 25% larger than the smallest available room
    • It is strongly discouraged to use a room that is 50% larger than the smallest available room
• Departmental Balancing (Dept)
  • Change in penalty for departmental balancing (= fairness of class distribution over times - for example, one department should not have all classes around noon and another department at 7am, they should share)
• Same subpart balancing (Subp)
  • Change in penalty for classes of the same subpart
    • Note: there is a penalty if classes are not distributed evenly - for example, if there are seven possible times for ten classes of the same scheduling subpart, there should be at most two such classes at a time
• Perturbation penalty (Pert)
  • Change in perturbation penalty caused by this assignment
    • This is only applicable when the solver is loaded in MPP (minimal perturbation problem) mode
    • Various weights can be assigned to different changes between the original and the new solution using Solver Configurations page

Note: for all of these properties, negative values mean improvements, positive values mean penalty for the timetable caused by this assignment.