Generating complete university course timetables by using local search methods

Abstract

The course timetabling problem of large-scale size in realistic applications is considered very hard and cannot be solved by exact methods. In this paper, we present a solution method for this timetabling problem using local search methods. The solution method consists of two phases: the first phase to provide an initial solution that satisfies all hard constraints and the second phase using a local repair method with tabu mechanism to produce high quality solution, taking the soft constraints into account. We perform preliminary experiments of the method on real data set and the results are quite promising. © 2006 IEEE.