=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3641/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=The Higher Educational Information System: Management of the Timetable Scheduling
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3641/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-3641
|authors=Liudmyla Koliechkina,Olena Dvirna,Yuri Ivanov,Kseniia Verhal
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/profitai/KoliechkinaDIV23
}}
==The Higher Educational Information System: Management of the Timetable Scheduling==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3641/paper5.pdf
The Higher Educational Information System:
Management of the Timetable Scheduling
Liudmyla Koliechkina1, Olena Dvirna2, Yuri Ivanov2, Kseniia Verhal2
1 Algorithms and Databases Department, University of Lodz, Narutowicza 68, Lodz, 90136, Poland
2 National University "Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic", 24, Pershotravneva Avenue, Poltava, 36011, Ukraine
Abstract
Automation of educational activities is an important strategic direction of a higher educational
institution development in today's conditions. One of the components of the implementation of the
information system of a higher educational institution is the creation of a schedule. The Timetable
Scheduling Module should provide work with big data and have the appropriate software and technical
infrastructure, analytical tools, reporting units, and error detection units. The paper examines certain
aspects of the schedule creation module. A description of the software and hardware infrastructure for
business process of forming the university schedule is given.
Keywords
Information system, higher educational institution, schedule, curriculum, students, system
architecture 1
1. Introduction
In modern conditions, society have been facing with the need of an ongoing digitalization of the
activity in all sectors activities of the economy, including the field of higher education as a central
venue for the creation of new knowledge economies for the 21st century [1]. Under the influence
of the rapid expansion of COVID-19 epidemic, the russian federation's military war of aggression
against Ukraine higher education institutions of Ukraine are undergoing digital transformation.
The information technologies and systems, learning technologies and digital platforms are
actively implemented to meet the needs of students and faculty, since these needs are critical for
teaching and learning. Trying to absorb the shock, students, academic staff, and administration
embarked on a fast experimentation and learning process on how to teach, learn and administer
digital education [2]. The study plan is the main foundation of the educational process in any
academic institution that determines the content all training activities that each student must
undertake during its university career. The study plan specifies a list of educational components
and their logical sequence according to the state educational standard, implements the basic
principles of subject selection, regulates the total academic load and the volume of academic
disciplines, the student's workload by periods of study, forms of final control. Given the complex
structure of the study plan, the generation of the schedule of the university's educational process
is important component of the educational process, its quality and efficiency. Considering the lack
of automated information systems in universities the process of building student's schedule is
considered one of the chronic problems facing the educational process in many educational
institutions [3]. The university course schedule is the main, final planning document that
regulates the educational work of students and educational staff. The problem of drawing up a
ProfIT AI 2023: 2nd International Workshop of IT-professionals on Artificial Intelligence (ProfIT AI 2023), November
20–22, 2023, Waterloo, Canada
lkoliechkina@gmail.com (L. Koliechkina), lenadvirna@gmail.com (O. Dvirna), tristar1707@gmail.com (Y. Ivanov);
vergal.ks@gmail.com (K. Verhal);
0000-0002-4079-1201 (L. Koliechkina); 0000-0002-0750-6958 (O. Dvirna); 0009-0008-2518-9264 (Y. Ivanov);
0000-0001-6611-0489 (K. Verhal)
© 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
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Proceedings
schedule at the university is to distribute a set of courses according to the curricula within the
given number of classrooms and time periods (pairs).
2. Related Work
The informatization of universities has become one of the main issues of higher education
management in the digital age.
Almaraz et al. [4] define the digitalization of HEIs. This research is focused on digital
transformation challenges in higher education institutions. Jackson [5] presents the research into
managerial strategy, pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation. The issues related to the
theoretical model of digital transformation in the HEI is presented in research [6]. The authors of
the paper [7] consider five general assumptions that hinder the digital transformation of HEIs. In
[8], the authors consider the problems of the digital transformation of higher education after
COVID-19. Paper [9] considers a key aspect of the digital transformation of higher education - the
creation of a digital learning space.
The Bologna process, proposed in 1999, tends to harmonise HE systems throughout Europe
in order to ensure compatible degree structures, equal academic qualifications and enhancing the
attractiveness of foreign students to study across Europe [10]. Structural convergence of HE
systems in Europe, generalized view of characteristics in HEIs, more complex and standardized
HEI systems, became an important task of universities [11]. Globalisation of HE stimulates the
use of more advanced information and communication technology [12]. Universities and colleges
of many countries of the world are constantly searching for tools used to automate educational
processes. Such tools are mainly focused on the selection of educational process management
systems, electronic document flow management systems, educational activity support systems,
virtual learning environment for providing distance education.
Information systems in higher education institutions are designed to manage and organize the
vast amount of data that is generated in these institutions. These systems provide a platform for
storing, processing, and retrieving data related to student records, financial aid, academic
programs, faculty, staff, research, and administrative operations.
Usually, educational institutions use corporate information and analytical systems (IAS) [13],
which are usually commercial products and require considerable costs for the purchase of
licensed software (software products of automation of the process of creation and management
and examinations of MedMe, BeAxi from KindGeek, (England) [14], software for the development
of the system of accounting the student body Lotus Notes/Domino from IBM, (USA) [15]). The
main disadvantages of using such information systems for Ukrainian universities are the English-
language interface, high cost and the failure to take into account the specifics of domestic
institutions of higher education.
Some of the key information systems used in higher education institutions include:
• Student Information System (SIS): SIS is a comprehensive database that stores and
manages student-related data, such as registration, enrollment, grades, and transcripts. It
also includes features for course scheduling, degree audit, and student communication.
• Learning Management System (LMS): LMS is an online platform used to deliver and
manage course content, assessments, and communication between faculty and students.
It also includes features for tracking student progress and performance.
• Financial Information System (FIS): FIS is used to manage financial data related to tuition
fees, financial aid, scholarships, and grants. It also includes features for budgeting,
accounting, and reporting.
• Human Resources Information System (HRIS): HRIS is used to manage employee data
related to hiring, payroll, benefits, and performance evaluation. It also includes features
for tracking employee attendance and leave.
• Research Information System (RIS): RIS is used to manage research data related to grants,
funding, publications, and collaborations. It also includes features for tracking research
progress and outputs.
These systems help higher education institutions to streamline their operations, improve
efficiency, and enhance the student experience. They also provide valuable insights into
institutional performance and help in decision-making processes.
However, quite often the automation of higher educational institutions builds on disparate
tools that are not combined into a single system for solving functional problems. Moreover,
separate software tools have their own information bases for each functional problem, do not
cover all objects and processes of the HEI activity, and do not take into consideration the
peculiarities of a particular university (a comprehensive educational scheduling system UniTime
[16]).
The use higher educational information system should ensure [17]:
1. In educational activities:
• creation of a modern distributed educational and methodological environment
university;
• utilization of Internet technologies in the educational process.
• implementation of e-learning.
• facilitation of the export and import of educational services in the international
educational space.
2. In scientific activities:
• presentation of the scientific potential of the university in the global information space;
• access of scientific staff to the information resources of world scientific centers;
• implementation of joint research and projects as part of international consortia.
3. In the university management:
• management of the processes of collection, storage and processing of information about
the university facilities, data search and analysis;
• provision of automated control of the execution of decisions;
• improvement of educational institution management planning;
• improvement the efficiency of the use of financial and material and technical resources.
But in their implementation, information systems have two groups of problem, namely
technical and non-technical [18]. The technical aspects related to systems itself, namely the
quality of technical information system. In contrast, the non-technical aspects are associated with
the perceptions of users op an information system that cause them to accept or refuse to use an
information system.
At present, universities of Ukraine have implemented and are using a number of automated
educational process management systems, namely [17]:
• Academic Information System (AIS) «STEP 5 PROF» [http://gavah.com.ua];
• АIS «Direktiva» [http://www.kitsoft.com.ua];
• АIS «University» [http://www.unitex.com.ua];
• A package of computer systems of "Polytek-soft" PE [http:// www.politek-soft.kiev.ua.];
• Program complex “ALMA-MATER” [http://www.direct-it.com.ua];
• АIS "Higher Educational Institution" [http://ndipit.com.ua];
• IS "University" [http://www.kspu.edu];
• The electronic management system of the university «Socrat» [http://vsau.vin.ua/]
• Program complex "Automated educational institution management system"
[https://mkr.org.ua/].
The information systems listed above automate the main structural divisions of the higher
educational institution - the dean's office, the academic department, the admissions committee,
the personnel department, the accounting and financial department, etc.
The main processes that can be automated in the presented automated systems include:
• management of the educational process;
• management of the introductory campaign;
• management of information resources;
• management of financial and economic activities;
• management of scientific work.
The analysis of the information systems of the automation of the activities of the higher
educational institution carried out in the article [17] allow to determine the following
characteristics of higher educational information system:
• open architecture;
• modular designs;
• cross-platform architecture;
• minimization of client software requirements;
• differentiation of user access rights;
• simultaneous access by multiple users;
• network security controls.
3. Systems design
iZETA is an automated system of planning, organization, management and control of the
educational process in higher educational institutions. The system is designed to create, support,
process and save information about the components of the educational process; automation of
document flow in planning, organization, management and control of the educational process;
information and analytical support of all units of the educational institution. The system covers
all stages from the formation of educational plans to the preparation of the timetable scheduling
and the formation of accounting data for the completed teaching load by the teaching staff of the
university. The purpose of creating the software package is to obtain reliable and complete
information about the educational process in a timely manner, as well as to reduce the labor
intensity of inputting and analyzing accounting information, increasing efficiency, consistency
and reliability of data. A software package implemented on the basis of client/server technology.
The database server uses the MySQL DBMS version 5.0 and higher, which ensures high reliability
of data storage and integrity. The client interface language of the system is Ukrainian. Most of the
printed forms automatically generated by the system are internal format reports that can be
exported in MS Excel or MS Word format, saved as individual files with the option for additional
individual editing and printing. The operating system required for installing the client system is
Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10. Work logs make it possible to monitor each user's
access to certain system data. With the help of the "iZETA-Updater" tool, system modules are
automatically updated.
Primary data is formed through a system of directories that make it possible to accumulate the
following information in the database:
• list of educational institutions (branches of the main educational institution);
• list of university classrooms;
• list of education programs;
• list of departments of the university;
• list of academic disciplines;
• information about academic staff and employees of the university;
• list of full-time and part-time positions;
• hourly wage tariff grid;
• categories of administrative documents;
• templates of printed forms etc.
The access of authorized users to work with system modules is regulated through the
administration module. With the help of a multi-level system of access regulation in one
information field, users of different departments and departments of the educational institution
can interact.
The system has a modular structure. Each submodule is called by the main module, and each
submodule completes a relatively independent function. Each submodule can be developed,
tested, and modified independently and finally forms the whole system, so the system has good
scalability. The system is divided into twelve modules:
• Management of the study plan;
• Editor of the study plan;
• Consolidated educational process timetable;
• Management of the Consolidated streams;
• Teaching load calculations;
• Teaching load distribution;
• Timetable scheduling;
• Management of the teaching load;
• Business trip manager;
• Management of publishing of printed products;
• Administrative documents management;
• Printing documents on higher education;
The system structure is shown in Figure 1.
Registration
Algotithms
Database
Interface - menus;
- forms;
- tables;
- reports
Add-on m-Admin
Moodle Web site
Figure 1: Top level components of iZETA
The server part of the iZETA is the intermediary between the database and users’ applications.
The main tasks of the server part are transparent access of clients to the database, ensuring the
simultaneous operation of all users and synchronization and data exchange between users. The
architecture of the software is designed in such a way that all users work in a single information
space. So, the changes made by one user are instantly visible to all other users.
The interface handles the different menus, forms, data management, schedule management
(Web site with schedule for students and academic staff), report management, and user
management.
Schedule formation is computationally complex problem of distributing sets of resources to
support the curricular needs: accessible workforce, courses, appropriated classrooms, labs, and
working days of academic staff and student. “The allocation of given resources to specific objects
being placed in space time, in such way as to satisfy as nearly as possible a set of desirable
objectives, subjected to constraints.” The presence of knowledge for creating timetabling
software has led to new insights, like improved methodologies and more comprehensive models
[19]. Timetable must meet a number of requirements and should satisfy the desires of all entities
involved simultaneously as well as possible. The timing of events must be such that nobody has
more than one event at the same time [20]. The architecture of the program module Timetable
scheduling Module consists of such main components, represented in Figure 2.
iZeta Data warehouses
Student Data
Calculation and distribution of the
Educational process planning Timetable
teaching load
University Classrooms Data
Management of the study plan Departments Academic Groups
Education programs Data
Management of the Consolidated
Lecturers Lecturers
streams
Departments Data
Summary schedule of the
Teaching load University Classrooms
educational process Courses Data
Educational Staff Data
Positions Data
Figure 2: The main component of the Timetable scheduling Module
This structure allows to meet the specific requirement of the system, including scalability and
maintainability. This Timetable scheduling Module is able to handle large amount of data and
flexible to adapt to changes in the scheduling requirements. This module performs the main
functions, such as:
• formation of a list of university classrooms with the selection of their types - lecture
classrooms, laboratories and seminar classrooms, multimedia and computer classrooms
(Figure 3);
Figure 3: The interface for choosing the university classroom
• formation of the schedule for the current academic year for the corresponding
educational institution in a semi-automatic mode;
• analysis of the formed schedule for the presence of critical inconsistencies for each
academic staff member;
• analysis of the workload of the classrooms for the specified period;
• blocking in the schedule for the academic staff member due to his business trip or
vacation;
• generating printed forms of relevant documents, exporting them to MS Excel file format.
The architecture of a Timetable scheduling Module includes several layers or components,
such as:
• User interface layer: This layer provides the user interface for administrators or
scheduling managers to input data, configure scheduling rules and constraints, view
schedules, and generate reports (Figure 4).
Figure 4: The interface for scheduling managers to input data
• Data layer: This layer stores all the data needed for scheduling, such as course offerings,
academic staff availability, room availability, and scheduling rules and constraints. In the
presented system, the module interacts with the database, calling the following data
references: Student Data, University Classrooms Data, Education programs Data,
Departments Data, Educational Staff Data, Courses Data, Positions Data.
• Scheduling engine layer: This layer includes the algorithms and rules that optimize the
schedule based on the input data and constraints.
• Reporting layer: This layer provides report on various aspects of the scheduling process.
These reports help managers to make informed decision about resource allocation and
course offering.
• Integration layer. This layer allows for integration with other modules of iZETA (Figure
2). It enables the module to exchange data, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the
entire system.
• User presentation layer. This layer provides the user web interface for the module,
allowing users to interact with the system and schedule. The layer distributes information
through a browser. So, the user can send requests to the server, and display the results
returned by the server.
• Error handling layer. This layer is responsible for identifying, reporting, and handling
errors that occur during the operation of the module. It provides mechanisms for
detecting, reporting, and handling errors, ensuring that the system operates smoothly
and efficiently. When an error is detected, the error handling layer generates an error
message that describes the nature of the error. The error message is displayed on the user
interface (Figure 5).
Figure 5: The interface for error handling
During the schedule formation, the system monitors three crucial components of the module:
the teacher's schedule, classroom availability, and group schedules. If the system identifies an
error at least in any of these components, courses cannot be scheduled for a specific time or in a
particular classroom. Each component's availability is represented by a specific color. For
instance, in the figure, the purple color indicates group availability, while the pink color
represents teacher schedules. To prevent conflicts in the schedule grid, such as when a teacher is
simultaneously assigned to multiple groups, changes are automatically reflected for all users
whenever adjustments are made to the schedule. Following this approach, dispatchers
responsible for creating the schedule can track real-time changes and identify any overlay errors.
In Timetable Scheduling Module there are some constraints that are detected using the Error
handling component [21]:
• Lectures should not have timeslot clashes.
• None of the room could be used for two different lectures at same time slot.
• None of the lecturer should have two classes at same time slot
• Every classroom must be scheduled exactly once at same time slot.
• The working hours should be according to teaching load.
The schedule adjustment capability enables Schedule Managers to manually fix schedules in
order to apply constraints that are not implemented by the auto-scheduler function of the system.
The architecture of the software module is designed in such a way that all schedule makers
work in a single information space. Changes made by one schedule maker are instantly visible to
all other schedule makers. According to this approach, the dispatchers that make up the schedule
can track changes in real time and see any kinds of overlays.
The key actors for the proposed program module “Timetable scheduling” include
Administrators, Education department, Schedule Manager, Head of department, Lecturers, and
Students (Figure 6).
Manage Application
Manage data
Manage users
<>
Admin
<>
Manage Lecturers
Data entry
<>
View a list of student
Manage Student <>
<>
<>
Manage Study Plan View teaching load
<> <>
Educational department
Lecturer
Manage teaching load <> Generate report
Edit Timetable View Timeble
<>
Create Timetable
<>
Delete Timetable
Schedule Manager Student
Figure 6: Use case diagram
The Administrator manages the application, access rights and data warehouse. The Education
Department is responsible for education planning: study plans, teaching load, student’s data and
academic staff data. The responsible employee of this department is engaged in updating data in
warehouse, creating, and editing of the study plans, monitoring the distribution of teaching load.
Report management enables the users to view or print schedule reports. Students and Lecturers
management allows the Education Department to edit other possible users of the system.
The schedule manager is responsible for scheduling and managing the overall Timetable
Module. Students and Lecturers, and other guest users in general may view schedules through
the relevant website.
Conclusions
An automated system (iZETA) was provided for the process of planning, organization,
management and control of the educational process in higher educational institutions. The paper
explains the work of the Timetable Scheduling Module of this system. The paper has contributed
directly to improving the work on scheduling by automating the work of the Schedule managers.
The program can be used for the general automation of the activities of a higher educational
institution, including the work of the educational department.
The system was implemented in two universities in Ukraine, and it received several
favorable reviews during its operation, highlighting improvements in various departments. The
main positive aspects of the system include:
- Quick generation of reports and documents related to student documentation, such as
orders and study plans.
- A convenient and intuitive program interface.
- A small program volume with low system requirements for installation.
- The real-time access to course schedules and grades is incredibly helpful. It has made
tracking an academic progress much easier.
Program users have also put forward a number of proposals related to improving the system,
which will be taken into account in further modifications. These include:
- The development of a mobile version of the schedule, adapted for Android and iOS.
- Integration with external tools like Google Calendar or task management apps, which would
enhance the system's usability for organizing assignments and deadlines.
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