• Title/Summary/Keyword: Examination Timetabling Problem

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The University Examination And Course Timetabling Problem With Integer Programming

  • Chung, Yerim;Kim, Hak-Jin
    • Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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    • v.24 no.9
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    • pp.9-20
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    • 2019
  • In this paper, we study the university timetabling problem, which consists of two subproblems, the university course timetabling problem and the examination timetabling problem. Given a set of classrooms, students, teachers, and lectures, the problem is to assign a number of courses (and examinations) to suitable timeslots and classrooms while satisfying the given set of constraints. We discuss the modeling and solution approaches to construct course and examination timetables for one of the largest Korean university. By using binary integer programming formulations, we describe these two complex real-world problems. Then, we propose a solution method, called NOGOOD, to solve the examination timetabling model. The computation results show that NOGOOD finds the optimal examination schedule for the given instance. Although we consider a specific instance of the university timetabling problem, the methods we use can be applicable to modeling and solving other timetabling problems.

COMPARISON OF METAHEURISTIC ALGORITHMS FOR EXAMINATION TIMETABLING PROBLEM

  • Azimi, Zhara-Naji
    • Journal of applied mathematics & informatics
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    • v.16 no.1_2
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    • pp.337-354
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    • 2004
  • SA, TS, GA and ACS are four of the main algorithms for solving challenging problems of intelligent systems. In this paper we consider Examination Timetabling Problem that is a common problem for all universities and institutions of higher education. There are many methods to solve this problem, In this paper we use Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, Genetic Algorithm and Ant Colony System in their basic frameworks for solving this problem and compare results of them with each other.

A Template-based Interactive University Timetabling Support System (템플릿 기반의 상호대화형 전공강의시간표 작성지원시스템)

  • Chang, Yong-Sik;Jeong, Ye-Won
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.121-145
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    • 2010
  • University timetabling depending on the educational environments of universities is an NP-hard problem that the amount of computation required to find solutions increases exponentially with the problem size. For many years, there have been lots of studies on university timetabling from the necessity of automatic timetable generation for students' convenience and effective lesson, and for the effective allocation of subjects, lecturers, and classrooms. Timetables are classified into a course timetable and an examination timetable. This study focuses on the former. In general, a course timetable for liberal arts is scheduled by the office of academic affairs and a course timetable for major subjects is scheduled by each department of a university. We found several problems from the analysis of current course timetabling in departments. First, it is time-consuming and inefficient for each department to do the routine and repetitive timetabling work manually. Second, many classes are concentrated into several time slots in a timetable. This tendency decreases the effectiveness of students' classes. Third, several major subjects might overlap some required subjects in liberal arts at the same time slots in the timetable. In this case, it is required that students should choose only one from the overlapped subjects. Fourth, many subjects are lectured by same lecturers every year and most of lecturers prefer the same time slots for the subjects compared with last year. This means that it will be helpful if departments reuse the previous timetables. To solve such problems and support the effective course timetabling in each department, this study proposes a university timetabling support system based on two phases. In the first phase, each department generates a timetable template from the most similar timetable case, which is based on case-based reasoning. In the second phase, the department schedules a timetable with the help of interactive user interface under the timetabling criteria, which is based on rule-based approach. This study provides the illustrations of Hanshin University. We classified timetabling criteria into intrinsic and extrinsic criteria. In intrinsic criteria, there are three criteria related to lecturer, class, and classroom which are all hard constraints. In extrinsic criteria, there are four criteria related to 'the numbers of lesson hours' by the lecturer, 'prohibition of lecture allocation to specific day-hours' for committee members, 'the number of subjects in the same day-hour,' and 'the use of common classrooms.' In 'the numbers of lesson hours' by the lecturer, there are three kinds of criteria : 'minimum number of lesson hours per week,' 'maximum number of lesson hours per week,' 'maximum number of lesson hours per day.' Extrinsic criteria are also all hard constraints except for 'minimum number of lesson hours per week' considered as a soft constraint. In addition, we proposed two indices for measuring similarities between subjects of current semester and subjects of the previous timetables, and for evaluating distribution degrees of a scheduled timetable. Similarity is measured by comparison of two attributes-subject name and its lecturer-between current semester and a previous semester. The index of distribution degree, based on information entropy, indicates a distribution of subjects in the timetable. To show this study's viability, we implemented a prototype system and performed experiments with the real data of Hanshin University. Average similarity from the most similar cases of all departments was estimated as 41.72%. It means that a timetable template generated from the most similar case will be helpful. Through sensitivity analysis, the result shows that distribution degree will increase if we set 'the number of subjects in the same day-hour' to more than 90%.