The university course timetabling problem is a combinatorial optimisation problem in which a set of events has to be scheduled in time slots and located in suitable rooms. The design of course timetables for academic institutions is a very difficult task because it is an NP-hard problem. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm with a guided search strategy and a local search technique for the u...

This paper describes how the university timetabling problem is addressed in the Laurea course Ingegneria dell’Informazione (Information Engineering) for the University of Ferrara, Italy. The university timetabling problem is modelled as a Constraint Optimisation Problem and addressed with ECLPS, one of the leading Constraint Logic Programming languages.

Following the success of the First International Timetabling Competition in 2002, the timetabling research community is organising a new competition on this problem (opening August 1st). This new competition will be on three different timetabling problems, and one of the tracks concerns the course timetabling formulation that applies to Italian universities (called Curriculum-based Course Timet...

Following the success of the First International Timetabling Competition in 2002, the timetabling research community is organising a new competition on this problem (opening July 22nd). This new competition will be on three different timetabling problems, and one of the tracks concerns the course timetabling formulation that applies to Italian universities (called Curriculum-based Course Timeta...

The purpose of this research is to solve the university course timetabling problem (UCTP) that consists designing a schedule courses be offered in one academic period based on students’ demand, faculty composition and institutional constraints considering policies established standards Association Advance Collegiate Schools Business (AACSB) accreditation. These involve assignment with high leve...

Following the success of the First International Timetabling Competition in 2002, the timetabling research community is organising a new competition on this problem (opening August 1st). This new competition will be on three different timetabling problems, and one of the tracks concerns the course timetabling formulation that applies to Italian universities (called Curriculum-based Course Timet...

The ant colony optimisation metaheuristic has shown promise on simplified artificial instances of university course timetabling problems. However, limited work has been done applying it to practical timetabling problems. In this paper, we describe the application of the ant colony optimisation to a highly constrained real–world instance of the university course timetabling problem. We present t...