A new model for automated examination timetabling

Abstract

Automated examination timetabling has been addressed by a wide variety of methodologies and techniques over the last ten years or so. Many of the methods in this broad range of approaches have been evaluated on a collection of benchmark instances provided at the University of Toronto in 1996. Whilst the existence of these datasets has provided an invaluable resource for research into examination timetabling, the instances have significant limitations in terms of their relevance to real-world examination timetabling in modern universities. This paper presents a detailed model which draws upon experiences of implementing examination timetabling systems in universities in Europe, Australasia and America. This model represents the problem that was presented in the 2nd International Timetabling Competition (ITC2007). In presenting this detailed new model, this paper describes the examination timetabling track introduced as part of the competition. In addition to the model, the datasets used in the competition are also based on current real-world instances introduced by EventMAP Limited. It is hoped that the interest generated as part of the competition will lead to the development, investigation and application of a host of novel and exciting techniques to address this important real-world search domain. Moreover, the motivating goal of this paper is to close the currently existing gap between theory and practice in examination timetabling by presenting the research community with a rigorous model which represents the complexity of the real-world situation. In this paper we describe the model and its motivations, followed by a full formal definition

Fairness in examination timetabling: Student preferences and extended formulations

“…In addition to requiring feasibility, the quality of an examination timetable is measured by the extent of the soft constraint violations. The formulations for standard examination timetabling problems [1][2][3][4] have penalties representing the violations of various soft constraints, including those which influence the spread of examinations across the overall examination time period, providing students with more time for preparation. Of particular interest here is the fact that standard examination timetabling formulations concentrate on minimising the average penalty per student.…”

Implementation of a Conflict-Freeexamination Scheduling System(ess) in Academic Institutions

“…Therefore, in this regard, the development of electronic exams scheduling and management system is the order of the day to avoid conflicts and generate fair exam schedule for all students of any university.In the current research work, we have developed an intelligent examination scheduling algorithm for timetabling of exams in any university [7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

A new binary model for university examination timetabling: a case study

“…In the end, they used a heuristic to solve the problem. McCollum et al (2011) considered an integer programming model with a cost penalty objective function. It tried to satisfy soft constraints as much as possible, and if it failed, a penalty was accounted.…”