Addressing Examination Timetabling Problem Using a Partial Exams Approach in Constructive and Improvement

Mandal, Ashis Kumar; Kahar, M. N. M.; Kendall, Graham

Abstract

The paper investigates a partial exam assignment approach for solving the examination timetabling problem. Current approaches involve scheduling all of the exams into time slots and rooms (i.e., produce an initial solution) and then continuing by improving the initial solution in a predetermined number of iterations. We propose a modification of this process that schedules partially selected exams into time slots and rooms followed by improving the solution vector of partial exams. The process then continues with the next batch of exams until all exams are scheduled. The partial exam assignment approach utilises partial graph heuristic orderings with a modified great deluge algorithm (PGH-mGD). The PGH-mGD approach is tested on two benchmark datasets, a capacitated examination dataset from the 2nd international timetable competition (ITC2007) and an un-capacitated Toronto examination dataset. Experimental results show that PGH-mGD is able to produce quality solutions that are competitive with those of the previous approaches reported in the scientific literature.

Citation

Mandal, A. K., Kahar, M. N. M., & Kendall, G. (2020). Addressing Examination Timetabling Problem Using a Partial Exams Approach in Constructive and Improvement. Computation, 8(2), Article 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/computation8020046

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 5, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 17, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: May 24, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: May 26, 2020
• Journal: Computation
• Publisher: MDPI
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 46
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/computation8020046
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4500753
• Publisher URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3197/8/2/46