A general examination scheduling system

Scheduling examinations is a problem in virtually every high school, college, and university. The basic challenge is to schedule examinations over a limited time period so as to avoid conflicts and to satisfy a number of side constraints. Over 10 years, the authors have developed EXAMINE, a robust and flexible examination scheduling system suited to the needs of most educational institutions. EXAMINE runs on a PC and is fast and user-friendly. It provides a choice of feasible schedules and solutions in which examinations are well spread out for most students. It handles requirements regarding the proximity of a student’s exams, room or time availability, and other factors. Over the past two years, the University of Toronto’s engineering faculty and Carleton University have collaborated with the authors to develop a software package, which has been implemented at both institutions.