IUL, exam sessions management

An online university holds in-person exams at many venues, with teachers travelling and students booking. Before this system, fitting it all together was work done by hand, in spreadsheets.

Now bookings come in from an Excel sheet and the algorithm does the rest. It starts from the smallest courses, ranks venues by that day’s priority and moves forward one slot at a time, respecting teacher and venue timetables, breaks between courses, daily caps per course and each student’s earliest date. If a venue is full it tries the others before moving the clock, and before saving it checks that no teacher and no venue is booked twice.

When two sessions overlap the dashboard flags it and, in one click, starts the new one after the last exam already set. Then the emails go out, from templates the administration edits on its own. Each student gets day, time and teacher, each teacher the list of their students with personalised learning plans highlighted, each venue the calendar of the courses it hosts.