Graph Colouring and Clustering Heuristic Approach for Minimizing Examination Duration: A Case Study

Abstract

Exam timetable is difficult to be done manually due to several factors such as dual academic calendar, larger student enrolments, constraints among invigilators and limitations of resources. At tertiary education, preparing exam timetable is very critical in order to ensure that all students are able to sit for the exam of every subject that they have registered without any clashing and only sit for one exam at one time. The lecturers who are also the invigilators as well need to be considered as one of the elements in the development of exam timetable as they are required to be in one venue at one time. Therefore, a good time table needs to ensure that the students and invigilators are able to commit their roles accordingly during the exam period. But the main problem is the duration of the exam which will be extended to fulfil all the requirements. This study presents a solution method intended for reducing exam duration in Centre for Foundation Studies and Extension Education (FOSEE), Multimedia University (MMU), Malaysia. The method of solution is using heuristic approaches that include graph colouring, clustering and sequential heuristic. The discussions were focused on constraints among invigilators and the approach is tested on real-world exam timetabling problems.

Performance Analyses of Graph Heuristics and Selected Trajectory Metaheuristics on Examination Timetable Problem

“…This is because, for many larger instances (examinations) in real-world settings, these search techniques are capable of finding a good quality solution in reasonable time and limited resources. These include graph-based sequential techniques [7], trajectory-based meta-heuristics[8], population-based meta-heuristics [9], and recently hyper-heuristics [10]. Detail description of various methods related to examination timetabling can be found in different surveys in the examination timetabling domain [11] [12,13] as well as in PATAT series of conference proceedings held from 1995 to 2018 (available at http://www.patatconference.org/).…”