TIMETABLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

By
OMARA INNOCENT IVAN

REG No:17/ASUL/05256/DICT.DP

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHOLOGY

FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Student Email Address: omarainnoivan@gmail.com

Phone Number +256-773826416

A Project Report Submitted to the Faculty of Business and Management for the
Study Leading to a Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award
of the Diploma of Information and Communication Technology of All Saints
University Lango.

Project Supervisor: Ongeng Andrew JAMES

Department of Information and Communication Technology

Faculty of Business and Management All Saints University Lango

Supervisors’ Email Address: handthreah@outlook.com

+256-778183495

July, 2019.

PROJECT REPORT

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Salutation/Approval
This work has been supervised and is now ready to be submitted to All Saints University Lango
department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of business and
management

Sign………………………. Date: 06/9/2019…………………….

Supervisor: MR. ONENG ANDREW JAMES

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Abstract
The material in this proposal has never been submitted to any university or any higher institution
of learning for award of any academic qualification. This report is the result of my own
autonomous research effort and investigation, where it is indebted to the work of others, the
acknowledgement has been made.

Registration No.17/ASUL/0525/DICT.DP

SIGN………………………… DATE…9/06/2019………………………

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List of acronyms
GB Gigabit

GHZ Gigahertz

GU Graphical User Interface

A.R Academic registrar

Email electronic mail

TGMS Timetable Generation Management System

VGA Video Graphics Array

RAM Random Access Memory

HTML Hypertext Markup Language

CSS Cascading Style Sheet

PHP Hypertext Markup Language

MYSQL My Structured Query Language

DBMS Database Management System

SQL Structured Query Language

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List of figures
Table 1 1 xiv

No table of figures entries found.

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List of tables

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Table of contents

Contents
Salutation/Approval 2
Abstract 3
List of acronyms 4
List of figures 5
List of tables 6
Table of contents 7
CHAPTER ONE 8
1.0 Introduction 8
1.2 Background 8
1.3 Problem statement 9
1.4 General Objective /Aim/ Purpose 9
1.5 Specific Objectives 9
1.6 Research questions 9
1.7 Project significance 9
Value proposition 9
Innovation 9
Impact 10
Business component 10
1.8 Scope 10
CHAPTER TWO: 11
LITERATURE REVIEW 11
2.1 Introduction 11
2.2 review of literature related to objective 1 11
2.3 review of literature related to objective 2 11
2.4 review of literature related to objective 3 11
2.5 review of literature related to objective 4 11
2.6 any other relevant literature 11
2.7 General remarks 11

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CHAPTER 3: 12
METHODOLOGY 12
3.0: Introduction 12
3.1 Sampling techniques 12
3.2 Study population and sample size 12
3.3 Data Collection Procedure 12
3.3.1 Development Tool. 13
3.4: Data Collection Instruments 14
3.4.1 Questionnaire 14
3.4.2 Interviews 14
3.4.3 Participation 14
3.5 Data processing and analysis 14
3.6 Data presentation and interpretation 15
3.6.0 Hardware and Software Specification 15
3.6.1 Server 15
3.6.2 Workstation 15
3.7 Software Specification. 15
3.8 Limitation of the study 15
3.9.0 Project Interfaces 16
Figure 2 Showing the Login Interface 16
Validation 16
Figure 3 Showing the Home Page Interface 17
Figure 4: Showing the Add Faculty Interface 18
Figure 5: Showing the Add Course Interface 19
Figure 6: Showing the Add Room Interface 20
Figure 7: Showing the Add Subject Interface 21
Figure 8: Showing the Add Time Interface 22
REFERENCES 23
APPENDICES 24
Table 3 showing the work plan. 25

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CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction
As demand for education increases and diversifies, so does the difficulty for designing workable
timetables for schools and academic institutions. Besides the intractability of the basic problems,
there is an increasing variety of constraints that come into play (Rahoul, 2003).

Timetabling is a problem that concerns every teaching institution. Every year and semester, a new
timetable must be produced to take account of staffs, students and course changes causing a
necessarily large amount of work. Computer timetabling and administration systems do exist to ease
this burden but each timetabling problem is as individual as the institution from which it originates
(Burke 2000).

Traditionally, timetabling at All Saints University, Lango (ASUL) faculty of Business and
Management for postgraduate programs has been departmentally led. Departments have had a great
deal of autonomy in creating their own timetables, and either a member of academic staff or a
departmental administrator is allocated to deal with the timetable. Timetabling has therefore become
of a “black art”, with individuals developing different methods of timetabling depending on their
professional backgrounds, and concerns have arisen about the lack of a pooled knowledge base for
timetabling.

Although new space cannot be created by an automated timetabling system, it can help to avoid such
problems through more efficient use of existing resources and enabling an overview of timetabling
so that under-used can be identified (Geller, 2006).

1.2 Background
As demand for education increases and diversifies, so does the difficulty for designing workable
timetables for schools and academic institutions. Besides the intractability of the basic problems,
there is an increasing variety of constraints that come into play (Rahoul, 2003).

Timetabling is a problem that concerns every teaching institution. Every year and semester, a new
timetable must be produced to take account of staffs, students and course changes causing a
necessarily large amount of work. Computer timetabling and administration systems do exist to ease
this burden but each timetabling problem is as individual as the institution from which it originates
(Burke 2000).

Traditionally, timetabling at All Saints University, Lango (ASUL) for entire programs has been
departmentally led. Departments have had a great deal of autonomy in creating their own timetables,
and either a member of academic staff or a departmental administrator is allocated to deal with the
timetable. Timetabling has therefore become of a “black art”, with individuals developing different

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methods of timetabling depending on their professional backgrounds, and concerns have arisen
about the lack of a pooled knowledge base for timetabling.

Although new space cannot be created by an automated timetabling system, it can help to avoid such
problems through more efficient use of existing resources and enabling an overview of timetabling
so that under-used can be identified (Geller, 2006).

1.3 Problem statement

Scheduling can be a time-consuming process, whether it is for a regular class or a special event,
factors such as capacity requirements, instructor preferences and audiovisual needs can make the
task more difficult. The need to deal with conflicting course requirements has become increasingly
important over the past several years.

1.4 General Objective /Aim/ Purpose

The aim of this system was to design and develop a simple, easily understandable and efficient
timetable scheduling for the Faculty of Information Technology.

1.5 Specific Objectives

To design a prototype that acts as a measure to create, manage timetables.

To model a Decision Support system that will minimize the use manual paper work.

1.6 Research questions

What is Timetable generation management system?
Can automated Timetable Management system solve the problem of resource optimization?
Who are those that shall benefit from the proposed system?
How shall the proposed system be used?

1.7 Project significance

The significance of this study was it to provide many benefits to many parties involved in the
educational process and the management of educational institutions which include the following;

⮚ Reduced management overhead.

⮚ Better utilization of campus resources.
⮚ Better distribution of rooms between courses.

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Value proposition
What value are you offering to your customers? Is it convenience, risk reduction, newness,
customization, design, performance, “Getting the job done”, price, and brand, cost reduction,
accessibility etc. Explain how your idea achieves that value.

Innovation
Currently, the initial timetabling system for All Saints University Lango was scheduled based on a lot
of manual paper work that had been reviewed having a lot of short comings. The proposed system
to be developed shall be providing solutions to the problems that were being encountered at the
university.

Impact
The proposed project shall impact both the students, lecturers and the University in accessing the
current system. The system is expected to produce significantly better timetables than those that
were actually employed (produced by hand), and should always take a considerably short period of
time to generate them. The system will provide an easy, time-saving way to generate lecture
timetables within given constraints.

Business component

1.8 Scope
The study took place at All Saints University Lango, Lira District. The system was designed and
developed in the department of ICT and was implemented at All Saints University Lango, Lira
District.

1.8.1 Technical Scope.

A set of both Hardware and software was used. During the study, a laptop with windows operating
system was used of minimum system requirement of Pentium IV, 50 GB of hard disc and monitor
displays of 10commend24 by 768 higher color 16 bit recommended.

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CHAPTER TWO:

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction
In its most general context, scheduling involves the arrangement, coordination, and planning of the
utilization of resources to achieve an objective (Fang, 2005). Timetabling problems particularly
addresses the optimal utilization of classrooms and timeslots in sequencing lectures between
instructors and students. During the construction of a timetable, one of the challenges was to ensure
no constraints of faculty, courses, classrooms, timeslots, or students are violated. These types of
resource-constrained schedule optimization problems have been long term studied with a huge
volume of work in both operational and artificial intelligence filed (Colorni et al, 1998).

2.2 review of literature related to objective 1

Fang, 2005

2.3 review of literature related to objective 2

Colorni et al, 1998

2.4 review of literature related to objective 3

2.5 review of literature related to objective 4

2.6 any other relevant literature

2.7 General remarks

Based on the finding, it was concluded that: timetable management can easily be developed
This system that was developed will automatically save cost
It will serve as an alternative to an expert usage
It can serve as individual teaching at any time

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CHAPTER 3:

METHODOLOGY

3.0: Introduction
This presents the method which I used in the development of the system with its phases, the various
activities in each phase, the tools which was used in the development of Timetable Generation
Management System.

3.1 Sampling techniques

The targeted audiences of this research were the family of All Saints University, Lango, staffs and
students who are using the manual timetabling system. The targeted subjects are likely to have
knowledge or experience in doing or using the timetable system.

3.2 Study population and sample size

It was decided that the research method used was face to face interview with some selected students,
staffs and academic registrar from the faculty of Business Administration. This method of collecting
data was used to acquire knowledge on the difficulty of preparing the manual timetable and how
readily is it available to the students on time. This helped in gaining data on how to develop the
system.

Table 1: Showing the study population and sample size.

Category Population Sample
Lecturers 12 4
Students 8 6
Academic Registrar 12 1
Head of Department 12 6

3.3 Data Collection Procedure

An interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the
interviewer to elicit facts or statements from the interviewee. I interviewed the Academic registrar
and students as well. This helped me to get the best information from the exact source.

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This method was used to acquire information from the stakeholders, attain hard facts, goals and
informal procedures. Interviews are used because the Analyst can probe in great depth about the
institution’s work which may not be achieved by other methods.

And lastly a lot of time was saved where the respondents are cooperative, highly responsive and brief
to the point.

3.3.1 Development Tool

Technically, I used php (hypertext pre-processor) to help get stored information, JavaScript to
capture users or patients’ data (user and system interaction), XAMPP Control Panel to develop and
manage databases, cascading style sheets (css) to style and beautify interfaces, HTML to develop all
interface

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Figure 1. Showing XAMPP Control Panel

Table 2 showing some requirements to be used during the development process of the proposed
Timetable Generation Management system

Tools Requirements Uses

PHP Adobe Dreamweaver Store information

Retrieve the stored information

Modify the stored information

Delete the stored information

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Java script Net bins editor Capture users and students information

Generate graph

Validate forms

XAMPP Develop database

Manage database

Run PHP scripts

JavaScript Design databases

HTML Notepad++,Adobe Develop interfaces

Dreamweaver

CSS To style and beautify the interfaces

3.4: Data Collection Instruments

3.4.1 Questionnaire
The researcher questioned drafted and printed in word document, for his findings about Timetable
construction in the Faculty of Business and Management.

3.4.2 Interviews
The researcher used face to face interviews. The first interview was with the academic board in
charge of timetable, Head of Departments, Faculty Dean of students. Data to be used are those
collected from interviewers.

3.4.3 Participation

3.5 Data processing and analysis

Data collected from the interviewers were entered into Microsoft Excel spreadsheet so; graphs and
tables could be generated.

3.6 Data presentation and interpretation

3.6.0 Hardware and Software Specification

Processor: 2.00GHz or Higher Hard Disk: 150GB or more Main Memory: 1024MBBackup Hard
Disk 150GB or more Monitor: VGA or Higher Resolution Monitor (1024*768 pixels) Network
Interface Card: Recommended Keyboard and mouse: Recommended

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3.6.1 Server
The project was designed and implemented using XAMPP Control Panel, MYSQL database,
Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP).

3.6.2 Workstation
Processor: Intel Pentium IV or Later 
Hard Disk: 100GB or more Main Memory: 512MBMonitor: VGA or Higher Resolution
Monitor (1024*768 pixels) Network Interface Card: Recommended Keyboard and mouse:
Recommended Scanner and printer: Recommended

3.7 Software Specification.

Operating System: Windows XP, VISTA, Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, 10.
Google Chrome, Notepad ++.

3.8 Limitation of the study

During my entire project work, I encountered many challenges mostly in the field of research. I
found it so hard to get the required information from the Academic registrar as some times he was
busy and he could tell me to go back later.

Other information about the university is so confidential and can’t be easily given out students.

Also in the field of research, I found a challenge of getting the required information about the
current system in existence where I was put on the waiting list to have my required Information
delivered.

The busy schedules at the University which limited my time to complete the system to be best of
my capabilities hence also one of the challenges I faced in coming up with this system.

The challenge of learning the programming language to be used was also a problem to me since it is
one of the latest language and thus with few support online hence putting me on tension to learn
and exploit more to meet my needs for the system hence also one of the challenges faced in the
coming up of my research project.

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3.9.0 Project Databases
Figure 3 showing the Database on localhost/phpmyadmin

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Figure 2 Showing the Login Page

On the login interface, the system indicates that it is secure enough and that the user of the system
should provide both well-known user credentials like username, password, and the system directs

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them to their respective pages depending on the level of privilege assigned to them by the
administrator.

Validation
Validation was achieved in the system where there was always an alert error message whenever
wrong information is entered where it is not supposed to be entered. This eliminates input of any
data into the database since data stored has to be of a particular format. Also validation was achieved
by use of a combination of JSF and MYSQL (my structured query language) which was used in
designing the databases.

Figure 3 Showing the Home Page Interface

After successful login to the system, you are welcomed to the home page of the system where you
can make schedules.

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Figure 4: Showing the Add Faculty Interface

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In the this interface, you are welcome to the Faculty site or web page that you interacts with to add a
Faculty to the System where you will be able to assign a Faculty, Faculty designation and then click
on the Add Faculty button.

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Figure 5: Showing the Add Course Interface

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In the this interface, you are welcome to the Faculty site or web page that you interacts with to add a
Course to the System where you will be able to assign a Course, Course’s designation and then click
on the Add Course button to add the Course to the system.

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Figure 6: Showing the Add Room Interface

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In the this interface, you are welcome to the Faculty site or web page that you interacts with to add a
Room for a particular lecture to the System, and you will just click the Add Room button and Room
will be created automatically.

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Figure 7: Showing the Add Subject Interface

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In this interface, you are welcome to the Faculty site or web page that you interacts with to add a
Subject or course unit to the System. Here you will set the subject, subject’s description and click the
Add Subject button.

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Figure 8: Showing the Add Time Interface

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In the this interface, you are welcome to the System site or web page that you interacts with to set
time to the System where you will be able to schedule your start time for a particular lecture as well
as the end time and click the Add time button.

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REFERENCES

(Burke, 2000, pp. 4:31-41)

Burke, 2000. The assigmnent of to-days problems in a school time-table. A heuristic approach European
Journal Of Operational Research, Volume Vol 8(5), pp. 4:31-41.

Burke, n.d. The assignmen.

Geller, 2006. A planning problem, s.l.: s.n.

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APPENDICES

Table 2
Table 2 Showing the research proposed expenditure

Activity Item Unit cost Total

Item description Quantity (ugx)

Research Ream of paper Drafting of 1 15,000 15,000

system modules
and design

Printing Drafts of 50 400 20,000

requirement and
report

Airtime MTN and 2 20,000 40,000

AFRICELL

Transport 20,000 20,000

Proposal Printing Booklet 2 copies 10,000 20,000

Binding Booklet 3 copies 2,000 4,000

System Internet Orange 1 GB 45,000

development
Modem Orange 1 100,000 100,000

Computer Laptop 1 1,200,000 1,200,000

Software 200,000
platforms

Development 500,000
and labor cost

Report Printing Booklet 2 copies 20,000 40,000

writing
Binding(hard Booklet 2 copies 10,000 20,000
cover)

Grand total 2,223,000

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Table 3 showing the work plan.
Project schedule

Task 2019 2019

Month FE APRI MA JU JU AU SEP OC NO DE

B L Y N L G T T V C

1 Feasibility
study

2 Data collection

3 Data analysis

4 Proposal
writing and
acceptance

5 System design

6 Coding and
validation

7 System
implementatio
n

8 Report writing
and
presentation

9 Closure

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