As of writing this document, Professor Lew Hitchner is the official Cal Poly Computer Science Department Scheduling Administrator, and has performed this duty for a number of years. Recently, he developed an electronic scheduling tool which utilizes a PHP interface connected to an SQL Database. It includes many filters for viewing schedule-related data, and includes both weekly and quarterly schedules. It is, however, a manual-edit and scheduling tool, and has no means of formally assessing preference strength or fairness. It is also limited to assigning times and lab rooms only; lecture rooms must be assigned by the Cal Poly administration office.

Good Features:

• provides a schedule suitable for submission to the Cal Poly administration office
• provides multiple view types with several filters such as specific courses and instructors or general categories (i.e. Technical Electives)
• shows overlapping items and provides robust views for visual assesment of such items
• subject to filters, provides the total number of hours of class scheduled on each day of the week
• color codes class sections by Lecture or Lab designation
• allows viewing of multiple quarters simultaneously
• when generating the schedule for a new quarter, automatically replicates the schedule for the same quarter of the previous year.
• great for viewing any number of items for a particular quarter, and also for comparing multiple quarters side-by-side (when using quarterly table view)

Bad Features:

• provides only manual item editing
• limited to a PHP interface
• Must return to query interface in order to modify the current view
• Multiple quarter viewing will overlap and become indistinguishable unlesss in quarterly table mode
• preference specification limited to 1st and 2nd choice, and only as a side note
• lecture rooms can be entered into the schedule, but only after assignment by the Cal Poly administration office

Missing Features:

• no automatic schedule generation, only replication
• no formal assessment of WTUs, preference strength, or fairness
• no means for receiving or accounting for direct student or faculty input (e.g. four year plans, detailed preferences, complaints)
• no means for assessing schedule fairness