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
- Room
- 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
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.
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