1.

Introduction

The research on timetabling and scheduling has had a great deal of interest among
artificial intelligence researchers in the last four decades. The research tackled various
fields like sporting [2], transportation [3] and nursing [4]. Nevertheless, the timetabling
for educational settings is the most widely researched field [1]. The difficulty of finding a
solution for timetabling problems increases exponentially with problem size. Hence,
Timetabling is an NP-hard problem where the optimal solution cannot be found in a
reasonable time for large problem sizes. University timetabling is a traditional problem in
educational institutions. It means either course or examination timetabling. In our study,
the focus is on the examination timetabling. In all educational institutions, the
examination timetable must adhere with certain constraints that are set forth by the
institution. For example, an obvious hard constraint is that a student cannot sit two exams
at the same time slot.

Various approaches including heuristic methods, constraint satisfaction techniques, graph

based methods and metaheuristics have been applied to the examination timetabling
problem [5].

Genetic algorithm (GA) is a popular metaheuristic approach that has been successfully
used for solving hard and complex optimization problems. Being a population based
methods and having operators like crossover and mutation, GAs provide a balance
between diversification and intensification strategies which are usually required to find
good solutions for an optimization problem. Therefore, using GAs for solving timetabling
solutions is justified and it indeed it has been utilized by researchers in the field to find
acceptable solutions in realistic settings.

The rest of the literature review is divided as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of
the timetabling problem. Section 3 discusses the examination timetabling problem, which
is handled in this research. Section 4 reviews previous work in examination timetabling
and discusses some important research that has made a contribution to this domain.
 Previous studies employing the use of genetic algorithms to the examination timetabling
problem are summarized in Section 5.

2. The Timetabling Problem

Many definitions of timetabling problems can be found in the literature. [3] Defined
timetabling as “the allocation, subject to constraints, of given resources to objects being
placed in space-time, in such a way as to satisfy as nearly as possible a set of desirable
objectives”.

On the other hand, [4] provided a general timetabling definition were a timetabling
problem contains four parameters which are: a set of timeslots, a group of resources, a
set of meetings and a set of constraints. Consequently, the problem is to assign resources
and times to the meetings in order to satisfy the maximum number of constraints.

3. Examination Timetabling problem

Educational timetabling is the most widely researched among the variety of timetabling
problems. All academic institutions perform timetabling in a regular periodic manner.
Lecturers and students are highly affected by the quality of the resulting timetables [10].
From the literature, it is obvious that course and examination timetabling are closely
related problems, but considerable differences exist, though. This project focuses on
examination timetabling problems.

Examination timetabling is the allocation of a group of examinations to a group of rooms

over a defined number of timeslots so that there will be no violation of any hard
constraint, and the number of violations of soft constraints is minimized [5].

Hard constraints are defined as those constraints that cannot be violated by the timetable
to be considered feasible. For this, there must not be any conflicts in the schedule. For
 example, students must not be asked to sit for two exams in the same timeslot. On the
other hand, soft constraints can be defined as those that are desirable to be satisfied by the
timetable, but can be violated if they cannot be achieved. As an example, there should be
a sufficient gap between exams over the timeslots in the timetable. Unfortunately, the
probability that all soft constraints will be achieved by a timetable is low as they usually
contradict one another. The secondary goal of all timetabling optimization methods is to
minimize the number of soft constraints violations. Researchers in the literatures [4,5,
10]approve that hard and soft constraints are institutional dependent, in such a way that
they differ considerably from one exam timetabling problem to another. For example,
taking prerequisites into considerations may be desirable in some cases, where an exam
for one course cannot be scheduled before the exam of its prerequisite course.

The following section provides an overview of previous work that has had a contribution
to the field of examination timetabling.

4. Previous work

Various researches have been conducted in the area of examination timetabling

attempting to optimize the quality of the generated examination timetable, in order to
save time and resources for academic institutions.

As previously mentioned, scheduling is to allocate a group of activities to a group of

resources meeting certain constraints. In the examination scheduling problem, exams are
considers activities, available times are resources, and two kinds of constraints are
considered which are hard and soft constraints.

[11] Has launched the research in this area where the EXAMINE system has been applied
to generate realistic timetables. For this, a sequential method has been applied to schedule
examinations. In this method, one of five heuristics has been used to order examinations
in terms of their difficulty. Examinations have been allocated in a sequential order. If any
case of conflict arises, a backtracking is needed to reallocate examinations in such a way
that removes conflict. Using this process, some exams have been moved to a waiting list
and reallocated later. EXAMINE has been applied to a thirteen real world problems
which have become known later as the Carter benchmarks. Any subsequent development
in the field tested against these benchmarks. Following [11], various techniques have
been proposed to generate examination timetables and to minimize the number of
constraints violations as mentioned.

Heuristic and meta-heuristic solutions have been presented to find a feasible solution for
the examination timetabling in a reasonable amount of time. Burke and Newall [12]
presented a heuristic priority based method where they weighted conflicts in a descending
order then use that ordering to minimize conflicts. [13] Presented a hybrid meta-
heuristics solution which includes tabu search and heuristics. Head and Shaban [14]
provided a heuristic technique to construct the examination schedule. Kahar and Kendall
[15] applied a heuristic solution for the examination timetabling problem at University
Malaysia Pahang. [16] Applied heuristic evolutionary algorithm to build timetables in a
Spanish university with the target to satisfy as much student preferences as possible.
Moreover, [17] proposed a metaheuristics approach based on a decomposition rule.

Some other researchers applied hybrid solutions and combinations to solve examination
timetabling problems. NajiAzimi [18] integrated a high penalty technique to meet hard
constraints and incorporated it with simulated annealing, tabu search and genetic
algorithms. [19] contributed to solving timetabling problems by modifying neural
networks techniques and compared the results with those gained from simulated
annealing and tabu search. [20] presented a hybrid evolutionary algorithm, where cross-
over has been replaced with search operators. [21] Presented an evolutionary based
algorithm to find a solution for the school timetabling problem in Greece by minimizing
the teacher’s gap hours. [22] Provided a combination solution that includes simulated
annealing, metaheuristics, heuristics and hill climbing techniques to solve the
examination timetabling problem using a soft constraint to evaluate the quality of the
resulting timetable in addition to hard constraints required for the feasibility the solution.
Mumford [23] proposed a solution that includes memetic and greedy algorithms to build
feasible examination timetables.

Integer programming is a common approach for timetabling problems. Daskalaki and

Birbas [24] presented procedural steps to solve the integer programming of the
timetabling problem. [25] Proposed an integer programming technique with the objective
of minimizing conflicts among classes taking some of the university constraints into
considerations. MirHassani [26] applied integer programming formulation at Shahrood
University taking the number of classes for each subject as a hard constraint. Also, a soft
constraint has been put, which is a one day break that must be put between two classes
that belong to the same course. [27] Applied integer programming to solve the
timetabling problem at Virginia University with the objective to reduce the length that
instructors have to elapse toward the classrooms that have the scheduled courses.

Case studies have been widely applied to solve realistic timetabling problems in various
universities taking specific constraints into considerations. Foulds and Johnson [28]
implemented a system to build university timetables considering specific circumstances
applied to NewZealand University. The system checks whether a room had been booked
two or more times, whether a course was allocated to a room in a such a way that the
number of students registered exceeds room capacity, and whether more than one course
are allocated to the same time period. Burke and Petrovic [29] presented a technique
based on decomposition of large realistic timetabling problems. [30] Designed a
timetabling solution and applied it on a realistic situation where they scheduled tables at
Eindhoven University. They have filled a wish list of courses to be assigned and tried to
assign classes for courses at the top level of the list. Also, they tried to distribute students
into sections that are as equal as possible.

Various other approaches have also been applied. Dimopoulou and Miliotis [31]
implemented a timetabling system to help in constructing the University of Athens’
 timetables. Birbas et al. [32] designed a multi-objective optimization solution with the
objective to satisfy the instructor’s preferences, which is to schedule main courses at the
beginning of the day, and to equalize the total of working and gap hours. [33] Applied
forward search approach to solve the university timetabling at Purdue University. They
took room, equipment and faculty member’s availability into considerations. [34]
Applied a multi objective evolutionary algorithm to solve the timetabling problem.

The following section gives a brief review of previous work that has applied genetic
algorithms to the examination timetabling problem.

5. Genetic algorithm and the examination timetabling problem

Genetic algorithms are well researched when speaking about examination timetabling
problems. [35] Researched all approaches that apply genetic algorithms to the timetabling
problem and compared them using speed, space and quality. [18] Included a genetic
algorithm in their proposed hybrid solution.

Erben [36] presented a genetic algorithm based on grouping where an operator is used to
swap two groups randomly selected in the chromosome. Sheibani [37] tried to maximize
the interval between exam subjects using genetic algorithms with the minimum number
of clashes. [38] Applied linear linkage representation to genetic algorithms with greedy
crossover. [39] Implemented an optimization timetabling utility using genetic algorithms
incorporated with simulated annealing. A Repair process has been included to ensure that
all faulty timetables are dismissed in order to prevent violations.
[40] Proposed a multi objective evolutionary algorithm including genetic algorithms and
a hill climber local search operator to minimize the number of clashes and timetable
length considering capacity constraints.

It is obvious from the review above that the timetabling literature is a wealth and new
contributions to the domain are required. We contribute to the literature by applying
genetic algorithms to generate timetables to the females section of the College of
Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS) in King Saud University extending the work
that has been done in the area of examination timetabling using genetic algorithms.
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