Course Scheduling Problem and Real-Life Implementation

Abstract

Course scheduling and classroom assignment problem is a common problem for all educational fields. It is an NP Hard problem. Especially universities should handle this problem while preparing course timetabling for each level due to elective courses and students taking upper/lower-level courses. There is a vast literature on this problem both for modelling and solution approaches. Although the essence of the problems is similar for the most each problem has some unique restriction and/or parameters. We study the timetabling of the courses of Industrial Engineering program at Yaşar University. We develop a mathematical model to maximize the minimum lecturer satisfaction. Due to the computational complexity of the problem we proposed a heuristic solution method namely the Genetic Algorithm. Gene structure we use ensures the feasibility of many constraints of the mathematical model. Computational results of optimal and heuristic method are compared. As a real-life implementation a university in Turkey Industrial Engineering Department data is used and results were reported. © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.