A SAT-based approach to solve the faculty course scheduling problem

Abstract

The faculty course scheduling problem is concerned with assigning time slots to courses while taking into consideration some departmental and university constraints and instructor preferences. The problem also aims at optimizing the performance criteria and distributing the courses evenly among the available time slots. The problem is a classic scheduling problem and has received some research during the past few years due to its wide use in academic institutions. Most of the proposed solutions were based on local search techniques. In this paper, we present a complete approach to solving the course scheduling problem using Boolean Satisfiability (SAT). Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.