STI College Global City

Scheduling is the allotment of resources over a time period in order to perform tasks. Course scheduling is an important and tricky scheduling problem for school administrators wherein the tasks to be scheduled are course or subject offerings. Resources include instructors, classrooms and the students and all of these must be efficiently and carefully matched for optimum utilization. Out of all the factors in a college, teacher is a person, who plays the major role in framing the career of the student. The students get highly influenced by the teachers in the college and the lessons taught by them. Teachers are also regarded as the mentors for the students, because their teachings learnt by them guide the students, throughout their life.

Faculty for the colleges are selected on the basis of their qualification and the expertise, they have in their respected fields. For the past years, student population continuously increases yet processes are still done manually. One is the process of faculty loading. Faculty loading is the distribution of workloads among faculty member which is a task that requires planning. The preparation of Class schedules and faculty loading are done by every department manually which are subjected to human errors. STI College is a computer education college wherein operates for thirty (30) years. STI College is the Philippines’ largest network of colleges with over two hundred (200) campuses nationwide. STI-College Global City is one of the most popular branches among the network schools of STI. It is located in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Philippines. It has an estimated faculty member of more or less one hundred (100) Instructors and it caters to the needs of more or less four thousand (4000) students.

The scheduling of the faculty is done by the program head. And the process of plotting the schedule will start in receiving the details. This includes the basic information about the faculty member, time and day available, subject expertise, type of faculty (regular, part-time full load, or part-time). After receiving, the type of the faculty member will now be classified. The program head will now group each according to their type. This will determine the number of units required to each faculty member.

Plotting of schedule will now follow. After the scheduling of the faculty, the initial schedule will be released. It will contain the Faculty name, subject list, number of units, time, and day. The last part will be the Confirmation of faculty loading. The program head and the academic head will verify each schedule to be load to the faculty. This will clarify if there is a subject that has been missed out. After verifying the schedule, the program heads will not release the official faculty schedule that will be given to all the faculty members. The CFL will be released two weeks after the start of the class.

Business Process
Receiving the details of the Faculty Members
The program head will receive the details of his/her faculty members. This contains all the basic information of each faculty member, availability, subject of expertise, and type of the faculty. Receiving the official course schedule from the academic head The program head will now receive the official course schedule from the academic head. It contains subjects, section, room, time and day. Getting all the subjects that are under to the department

In this process, the program head identify all the subjects from the official course schedule that are under his/her department. The program heads record it on a paper or in an excel file. Plotting of Schedule

The program head will plot the schedule through assigning each faculty members according to their subject of expertise. The plotting of the schedule will first be based on the ranking of each faculty member. After plotting all the faculty members with their subject of expertise, if there are still unscheduled subjects, the program head will schedule this subject based from the department of each faculty member regardless of their subject of expertise. Release of Initial Schedule

After the plotting of schedule, the program head will now release the initial schedule to the faculty members. Clarification of Schedule
Two weeks before the start of the class the Program Head and the Academic Head will verify each schedule to be loaded to the faculty members. This is to clarify if there are any subjects that had been missed out during the scheduling.

Release of CFL
When the schedule of all subjects had been finalized, the program head will now release the official faculty schedule to the faculty members. And the program head will now pass the CFL (Confirmation of Faculty Loading) to the academic head.

1.1 Statement of the Problem
General Problem
STI College Global City is experiencing difficulty in plotting the Faculty schedule. There are subjects being overlooked causes some sections to have no professors or some professors encounter conflict in their schedule. Conflicts occur during the plotting of Faculty Schedule

The Program Heads are having a problem in plotting the schedule because they only do it manually that causes them to miss out some subjects resulting conflicts in scheduling of the professors or sections without professors. Consumes a lot of time in plotting the schedule of the Faculty The assigning of the faculty in each subject consumes too much time because it is manually being plotted by the program heads. The Program Heads also uses too much paper during the scheduling process. Because of this, it will be difficult and time consuming for them if they need to find a specific file. Inaccurate generation of reports of the Faculty Schedule

The Program Heads are having a problem in generating an accurate report because of the conflicts in scheduling the faculty. If the schedule of the faculty encountered conflicts, the content of report becomes inaccurate. Difficulty in finding the availability of the faculty

The Program Heads are having a difficulty in determining the availability of the faculty members because they must manually look and scan for every schedule to check if the faculty member is available. Because of this, it will consume a lot of time in preparing the schedule and possibly the program heads might overlooked the schedule of the faculty members and might bring conflicts to the schedule of the faculty member.

1.2 Overview of the Current State of Technology
This chapter will discuss some topics related and served as a reference in the study. This will present and provide gathered facts and ideas from different literature related to the study like books, journals, and other electronic sources. This chapter will also present a brief discussion about the researched studies from local to foreign studies.

Foreign Studies
Preference Driven University Course Scheduling System (June 2010) By Heather Bellardo
California Polytechnic State University (Master of Science in Industrial Engineering) This thesis contains a University course planning and scheduling, and faculty course assignment. The proponents of the said thesis considered the faculty member time availability and preferences and general student time slot preferences as it minimizes dissatisfaction while avoiding conflicts among labs, faculty members, and courses offered for each class level. Faculty Course preference

The faculty course preferences are defined so that professors are assigned to classes they prefer to teach and eliminate classes that they cannot teach, or should not be assigned to. Each faculty member defines their course preferences for each course that is offered on a scale of 0 to 3 and 9. Some analysis was performed around the preferences and the proponent was able to determined that because the nature of course preferences is not linear, the scale is created from 0 to 9 wit acceptable preferences from 0 to 3. They defined these preference levels as: 0 – This faculty member is a professor for who would really like to continue to teach the course.

This professor delivers a high quality of instruction on the topic and the student benefit from having this faculty member assigned to their course. 1 – This faculty member is proficient at teaching the course and enjoys the topic. 2- This faculty member is willing and interested in teaching the topic but hasn’t taught it previously. 3- This faculty member would prefer to not teach the course, but team needs them because they are capable. 5 – This Faculty member would really prefer to not teach the course. Very uncomfortable with topic that will affect the instruction quality. 9- This faculty member is not capable of teaching the course.

Inputs and Constraints
The major inputs and constraints to the scheduling dashboard are: faculty time availability and preference for the term, course assignment for each section offered, section constraints, default university schedule time patterns, course details, and course overlap constraints. Each of these inputs and constraints has been incorporated into the scheduling dashboard as input into the scheduling model formulation. For the most part of the scheduling dashboard is not the recommended input portal for the data, but instead a dashboard that pulls the data from other tables and consolidates it to display the data in the format required.

Faculty time availability and preferences is how the system understands when a faculty member can or cannot teach and what times are preferred over other times. This input uses the time preference scale of 1 to 4 and is based on faculty member input prior to planning and scheduling.

An Automatic Course Scheduling Approach Using Instructors’ Preferences (2010) By Ibrahim Aljarah, Ayad Salhieh, and Hossam Faris North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA, Jordan University of Science and Technology, University of Jordan

This thesis entitled “An Automatic Course Scheduling Approach Using Instructors’ Preferences” was made by the students from the different universities abroad to solve a problem that has been extensively research in the last decade. There were numerous approaches proposed to solve the problem. The proponents proposed a new approach to process a sequence meetings between instructors, rooms, and students in predefined period of time with satisfying a set of constraints divided in variety of types. The proponents also proposed a new representation for courses timetabling and conflict-free for each time slot by mining instructor preferences from previous schedules to avoid undesirable times for instructors.

The researchers conducted experiments on data gathered from different departments of the university and followed the stages they proposed. One of the stages is the Instructor Assignment Stage. Assigning the instructors to courses that guaranteed maximizing satisfaction of preferences for each instructor. The instructors’ assignments are done by using priority measure for each of the faculty member. The selection is done by using available information from the departments with some predefined information.

Local
FACULTY LOADING FOR MPS DEPARTMENT OF FEU-EAST ASIA COLLEGE
This project entitled, “Faculty Loading for MPS Dept. of FEU-East Asia College” is a web-based system that provides the users with functionalities such as the loading of schedules, managing data of professors, managing of data courses and display reports. The chosen client for this project is the Math & Physical Sciences Dept. of FEU- East Asia College. Through this system, the MPS department can make schedules for all of their professors automatically based on the specialization & time availability of each faculty. The system can also display the report of schedule for each professor including the number of units given. For the limitation, the system is made for the MPS Dept. only and the online enrolment system is not included in this system.

Upon developing the system, the proponents used a database which the mysql, php, and JavaScript, Ajax, and Adobe CS6 Applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, illustrator, and fireworks. After developing the system, the system can the system can now add, edit, delete, and maintain files. The system has been assessed in terms of FURPS model (Functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and supportability) to evaluate the system.

Conclusions
After the process of gathering data and implementing the said project, the following conclusions were drawn. 1. In constructing the system, the proponents did more research on how to make the system better and to achieve its goals. 2. The system has undergone changes in interface to make the system more user-friendly. Recommendation

Based from the findings, certain recommendations were made for the improvement of the project. 1. Enhancements are needed to be made on the following features:
a. Design of the interface.
b. Different faculty load output to choose from.
c. Giving instructions to user.
2. Include/ Incorporate access to faculty members.
3. Inclusion of tentative/ Final Teaching load report.

Source: Thesis Book from Far Eastern University Library entitled “Faculty Loading for MPS Department for FEU-East Asia College E-faculty loading 2010 by F. Bernardo

Software with automatic scheduling for teachers workload that can be easily access by faculty members will be handy to everyone. While teachers expressed concern for their own workload, they expressed considerable concern that student’s needs were not being met. Teachers also expressed concerns with the exorbitant amount of paperwork associated with the documentation process. It’s time consuming. The proponent’s believed that the proposed study will lessen the time consumed when scheduling a faculty workload. The faculty of the college should be well versed with all the technological developments related to the field. They should be able to answer the queries of the students with examples and references of the developments happening in the society. (Gurleen Kaur, 2010) Faculty scheduler should be efficient enough to load the right subjects to the right faculty according to their field of specialization. The students get highly influenced by the teachers in the college and the lessons taught by them.

Teachers are also regarded as the mentors for the students, because their teachings learnt by them guide the students. In an article entitled “The measurement of faculty workload”, it is said that before a measurement procedure can be decided upon, it is necessary to define what is being measured. To measure faculty workload, we need to know which activities are to be included in and which excluded. (Earley Peter,2008) To achieved a conflict and problem free schedule among the faculty. A system should have inputs of information based on the availability and capability of the faculty. Avoiding conflict among schedules and work expertise will produce a harmonious relationship between the administrator, faculty and students as well.

In the book Essentials of research and Thesis Writing, it is said that Computerization is means of simplifying production speed and accuracy for the work elements associated with the mass production. Technology has many available to user devices that can see a better and mechanism are more, more powerful, more precise, more consistent and fully more predictable, unlike human workers. They do not complain of human workers, they do not retain productivity. (F. Bernardo, 2010) Computers and other technologies play a vital role in the life of many people. It changed the lifestyle of many individual and the way people do their job. Computers are used to remove excessive delays or improve the flow of information.

1.3 Objectives
1.3.1 General Objective
To develop a module that will be able to generate the schedule of the faculty, accurate and reliable reports that will lessen the time being consumed in scheduling.

1.3.2 Specific Objectives
To develop a module that will generate the schedule of the faculty with no conflicts. This module will be able to help the program heads in scheduling the faculty. This module will help the program head to schedule the faculty without conflicts and it will reduce the overlooking of unscheduled subjects. To develop a module that will generate a precise and dependable report. This module will generate reliable reports that will lessen the works of the program heads. To develop a module that will ease the time in plotting the schedule.

This module will lessen the time in plotting the schedule that the program heads consumed whenever they do it manually. To develop a module that can easily find the available faculty for the subject being scheduled. This module will help the program heads to find for the available faculty member to be assigned for a specific subject. With this module, the plotting of schedule will be easier for the program heads and he/she will be able to choose the faculty member preferred to take the subject through a manual selection.

1.3.3 Scope and Limitation
This study will only include the concepts on how the program heads do the scheduling of faculty members. It will only gather all the needed information and rules implemented in doing the faculty scheduling.

This study will include the concept of the Program Heads based on how they do the scheduling of the faculty members. All the information needed from the Faculty will be gathered and all the rules will be considered and implemented during the plotting of the schedule.

This also includes the process of faculty scheduling that the program/department heads do. The receiving the details of the faculty, receiving the official course schedule from the academic head, getting all the subjects that are under to the department, plotting of schedule, releasing of initial schedule, clarification of schedule and the releasing of CFL.

This study will not include the concepts, information, and rules implemented behind course scheduling. This study will also not cover any process related to the administrative and consultation hours of all the faculty members.