Reinforced Island Model Genetic Algorithm to Solve University Course Timetabling

Abstract

The University Course Timetabling Problem (UCTP) is a scheduling problem of assigning teaching event in certain time and room by considering the constraints of university stakeholders such as students, lecturers, departments, etc. This problem becomes complicated for universities which have immense number of students and lecturers. Therefore, a scalable and reliable timetabling solver is needed. However, current solvers and generic solution failed to meet several specific UCTP. Moreover, some universities implement student sectioning problem with individual student specific constraints. This research introduces the Reinforced Asynchronous Island Model Genetic Algorithm (RIMGA) to optimize the resource usage of the computer. RIMGA will configure the slave that has completed its process to helping other machines that have yet to complete theirs. This research shows that RIMGA not only improves time performance in the computational execution process, it also offers greater opportunity to escape the local optimum trap than previous model.

Solving university course timetabling problem using localized island model genetic algorithm with dual dynamic migration policy

“…Following previous research , this work also uses two types of constraints: hard and soft constraint (SCs). Hard constraint (HC) is a constraint that must be satisfied.…”

“…Previous research by Gozali et al . succeeded in solving medium‐scale student sectioning UCTP. They implemented the asynchronous island model GA (AIMGA), which is a basic island model GA with an asynchronous mechanism.…”

“…DM‐LIMGA uses a localization strategy by implementing a different kind of GA for each slave. We modify the previous GA model used to solve Telkom UCTP . We divide the slaves into shallow GA (SGA) for speed‐based, medium GA (MGA) for standard, and deep GA (DGA) for performance‐based.…”

“…Regarding its difficulty, Garey included timetabling as an NP‐hard problem . However, some universities, such as Telkom University and Purdue University , can have a large number of students and classes. This condition increases the problem complexity because the search space also increases.…”

“…Moreover, several universities such as Telkom University and the University of Waterloo implement student sectioning. Student sectioning is a problem of assigning students to classes of a subject while respecting individual student requests along with additional constraints .…”