Folgearbeit: Automation of the OST-RJ Examination Scheduling

As stated in our prior semester project "Automation of the OST-RJ Examination Scheduling", December 2020, exam scheduling is a known NP-complete problem. Finding the best solution for such a problem is nearly impossible for a human and takes forever for a computer. Computer-aided exam scheduling, or generally speaking problem-solving, takes advantage of trying many possible solutions in an automated way and combining it with algorithms that help optimize the solving process. Testing the quality of a solution is carried out based on several constraints and their assigned penalties and weights. Precisely tailored mathematical calculations and carefully chosen algorithms are required for providing solutions that meet the requirements in a reasonable amount of time.

The version developed for the bachlor's thesis expands the functionality of the exam scheduler not only to cover the mandatory constraints but also to optimize the solution based on availabilities, optimal distributions, and nice-to-have properties such as lunch breaks. Furthermore, considerable improvements have been made to the user interface, allowing the user to import data, control the solving process, visualize the exam schedule, gain insights into the resulting solution, and manually modify the schedule to work with the application hand in hand.

The software and its results are ready for a first pilot phase. Although some manual pre-processing of the exam schedule is still required, scheduling becomes much more comfortable, reliable, and of much higher quality. The process of examination scheduling is reduced from several weeks to an absolute minimum in the range of days or even hours. Our comparison of automatically generated examination schedules with manually created ones shows at least equal if not better results.