How to setup curricula for my university? #214
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Hello, I'm student from Innopolis University, and I'm responsible for optimizing scheduling in our uni and we have decided to use unitime. Currently we have such system for student curricula: For example, my program looked like this:Group B22-CBS-02, B22 means that we are bachelors that started study in 2022, CBS - Cybersecurity track, 02 - just number of group. Fall 2022 (1st year of study)
*Sports Electives — During the semester, you need to earn 30 academic hours in sports classes, which you can enroll in freely (their schedule is drawn up separately). Spring 2023 (1st year of study)
Summer 2023 (1st year of study)
** Tech and Hum Electives: In some semesters (Tech+Hum on Summer of 1st year, Tech+Hum on Summer of 2nd year, Tech on Fall of 3rd year) the student must select and attend electives. The student selects the top 5 electives and is then assigned to one of them. Different programs can enroll to the same elective. Fall 2023 (2nd year of study)
Spring 2024 (2nd year of study)
Summer 2024 (2nd year of study)
Fall 2024 (3rd year of study)
Spring 2025 (3rd year of study)
The fourth year of study is entirely devoted to writing a Thesis. Commonly, subjects have Lectures - one class a week for all groups enrolled to this subject simultaneously; Tutorials - same as Lecture, often right after Lecture, another teacher; and Labs - one class a week, for each group separately, conducted by Teacher Assistants. What is already doneI have already add rooms and staff to the Unitime instance via xmls, now is needed to setup curricula and terms properly. |
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Replies: 6 comments 10 replies
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Curricula offer a way to provide student demands for course timetabling. The curriculum contains, for each major (student program) and classification (year of student), an expected number of students and the list of courses that these students are expected to take. Each course can either be expected to be attended by all students of the major and classification, or an expected percentage can be defined. So, it is possible to model mandatory, elective, and optional courses. This data can be used to estimate the number of students expected to attend each course. They can also be combined with additional sources of data, e.g., last year's course enrollment data can be used to estimate the number of students taking optional (or other courses not listed in their curricula), or with the actual pre-registration. For instance, there are typically no pre-registrations for the incoming students at the time course timetabling is being built, so the curricula can be used for new beginners, while pre-registrations are used for the continuing students. UniTime is not a degree-planning tool; it only needs a projection of current degree plans into the academic session being timetabled (so, if you are timetabling Summer 2026, you would only list courses that students in the given program and year of study would take in Summer 2026). The curriculum data is usually imported from an external system, typically a student information system or a degree planning tool, together with the projections. Internally (for the course timetabling solver), curricula as well as the other sources are combined into a list of students (which may be the real students, or made-up students based on the estimates) and a list of courses for each student. The Real-life Curriculum-based Timetabling paper explains the theory and the algorithm used. |
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Thanks for answer, could you please give an example XML for this? |
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Example: https://www.unitime.org/interface/curricula.xml It is listed under the Curriculum information XML on the XML Interfaces page. |
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I have several questions @tomas-muller
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Courses in UniTime are identified by their subject area abbreviation ( Also, please note that the courses, student academic areas, majors, and classifications must exist before the Curriculum XML is imported. The courses can be imported using the Courses XML, the areas, classifications and majors using the Academic Session Setup XML.
Yes, and place them in a non-conflicting group (
Years of study are usually modelled by academic classifications. Individual programs can be modeled by majors and grouped by academic areas. Or if there are sub-programs or tracks, programs are academic areas, and sub-programs/tracks are majors. But other mappings are also possible. See help.unitime.org/faq/timetabling-student-cohorts for another example, where classifications are used to split students into smaller groups/cohorts.
If all the majors share a common part, it is possible to define a curriculum for the common part (no major listed for this one), and then each major's curriculum can list only the additional courses (inheriting the common courses from the academic area). In this case, set the
Yes, but not by the curricula per se. If individual student course requests are used for course timetabling, the solver will automatically check for conflicts when a student is attending a class and is also assigned as an instructor to some other class (assuming both records have the same external ID). Or if the TAs are assigned later, the Instructor Scheduling can be used for assigning TAs. It will check for conflicts between classes the TA attends as a student and those being considered for them to teach (assuming UniTime has the student class enrollments, either imported or produced by student scheduling). Alternatively, if you do not have any of these, you can always use Distribution Preferences to provide additional preferences between classes. For example, you can set the Required Different Time between the classes the student is expected to teach and the classes they take as a student, ensuring that no two of them overlap in time. |
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Thanks. Now I started understanding... |
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Well, the Curriculum XML looks pretty complete. However, I think you may want to spend some time playing with the user interface and learning how UniTime organises the data. For example, as I mentioned earlier, the Also, please feel free to use our online demo and documentation. In particular, take a look at the Administrative Manual, which covers initial setup and the first academic session. |
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How to setup Instructional Offering for such case: I made a instructional Offering and now want to add configuration for it. 
We should have 1 Lecture per week for many student groups at once in Large Lecture Room, provided by Professor Frolov: Should be 10 lectures during the semester. |
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You can set the course with one Lecture subpart having just one class for all the students, one Tutorial subpart also with one lecture, and one Lab subpart with 11 classes. While the Instructional Offering Configuration page only has one limit for all classes of the same subpart (e.g., all the Lab classes would have limit of 27), if needed, you can adjust individual class limits later on using the Multiple Class Setup page. The number of meetings of a class is derived by the combination of a date pattern and a time patterm. So, for instance, you can have a date pattern spanning 10 weeks and a time pattern with one meeting per week. If individual meetings of a class do not happen at the same times of the week or are not in the same room, you can do that by splitting the class into multiple. See Splitting a Class for more details about that. The Tutorial right after the Lecture can be modelled with Distribution Preferences, e.g., as a combination of Required Precedence and Preferred Back-To-Back. Also, please take a look at our Course Timetabling Data Entry Manual. |
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Where to set time-pattern for instructional offering subpart in configuration? 
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On the Edit Scheduling Subpart or Edit Class pages, in the Preferences section (Time selection). But there needs to be at least one compatible time pattern created on the Administration > Academic Sessions > Time Patterns page. That is, the number of minutes per meeting times the number of meetings per week on the time pattern must match the minutes per week set on the subpart in the Instructional Offering Configuration. So, for 100 minutes per week, you can have something like 1 x 100 (one 100 minute meeting per week) or 2 x 50 (two meetings of 50 minutes per week). Please see the online demo for some examples. |
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Thanks, now getting to next step, I guess will be better to display some warning that you have no suitable time patterns and also show the rules. |
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This is in the documentation, e.g., see https://help.unitime.org/edit-class#preferences |
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Hello, how to setup instructional offering with 10 labs where each lab can be provided by one of three TAs? Such setup: Give many warnings in the solver: 
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You are actually assigning all three instructors to all the labs. So, no two labs can be placed at an overlapping time. Can you just assign the first four labs to the first TA, another four to the second TA, and the last to the third TA? While UniTime can assign instructors automatically, this is not part of the course timetabling problem. If needed, TAs can be assigned after the course timetabling is done using the instructor scheduling module -- using teaching requests to indicate classes (or combinations of classes) that needs an instructor assigned. |
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Okay, I see, I will divide by groups, thanks for answer. |
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Curricula offer a way to provide student demands for course timetabling. The curriculum contains, for each major (student program) and classification (year of student), an expected number of students and the list of courses that these students are expected to take. Each course can either be expected to be attended by all students of the major and classification, or an expected percentage can be defined. So, it is possible to model mandatory, elective, and optional courses.
This data can be used to estimate the number of students expected to attend each course. They can also be combined with additional sources of data, e.g., last year's course enrollment data can be used to estimate the nu…