Medium Constraints

These kinds of constraints fall into the shaded region between the <#331#>hard<#331#> and <#332#>soft<#332#> constraints in the sense that they do not directly deal with time conflicts as do the hard type, but nonetheless have a high penalty attached to them (though not as high as that associated with the hard constraints). In the final schedule the penalty of these constraints should be minimized and preferably reduced to zero. In short, these kind of constraints should be satisfied but are nevertheless relaxable. Some examples of medium constraints: Constraints involving classes that are not available during certain time period(s) due to the unavailability of their instructors at those times are harder than constraints of no overlapping classes involving common student(s). Also constraints involving students preferences fall in this category.