期刊名称：International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA)
印刷版ISSN：2158-107X
电子版ISSN：2156-5570
出版年度：2020
卷号：11
期号：3
DOI：10.14569/IJACSA.2020.0110385
出版社：Science and Information Society (SAI)
摘要：Every university faces a lot of challenges to solve the examination timetabling problem because the problem is NP-hard and contains numerous institutional constraints. Although several attempts have been taken to address the issue, there are scarcities of interactive and automated tools in this domain that can schedule exams effectively by considering institutional resources, different constraints, and student enrolment in courses. This paper presents the development of a system as a graphical and interactive tool for examination timetabling problem. To develop the system, combining graph coloring heuristic and local search meta-heuristic algorithms are employed. The graph heuris-tic ordering is incorporated for constructing initial solution(s), whereas the local search meta-heuristic algorithms are used to produce quality exam timetables. Different constraints and objective functions from ITC2007 exam competition rules are adopted, as it is a complex real word exam timetabling problem. Finally, the system is tested on the ITC2007 exam benchmark dataset, and test results are presented. The main aspect of the system is to deliver an easy-to-handle tool that can generate quality timetables based on institutional demands and smoothly manage several key components. These components are collecting data associated with the enrolment of students in exams, defining hard and soft constraints, and allocating times and resources. Overall, this software can be used as a commercial scheduler in order to provide institutions with automated, accurate, and quick exam timetable.
关键词：Examination timetable; graph heuristic; local search meta-heuristic; ITC2007 exam dataset; interactive tool; NP-hard problem
