A Scientific approach for university course timetabling

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to search for a scientific method to prepare a university course timetable satisfying all the requirements subject to the available resources. To achieve this objective, we propose an optimization method. First, we develop an optimization model by interpreting the objective and the constraints of the problem mathematically. This particular optimization model is a 0-1 integer linear programming problem. We apply the Branch and Bound technique to solve this problem using the optimization software package LINGO, for the courses offered by the Faculty of Science, Eastern University of Sri Lanka. Finally, the solution to the optimization problem is converted to a regular university timetable.