Abstract
Research in the domain of school timetabling has essentially focused on applying various techniques such as integer programming, constraint satisfaction, simulated annealing, tabu search and genetic algorithms to calculate a solution to the problem. Optimization techniques like simulated annealing, tabu search and genetic algorithms generally explore a solution space. Hyper-heuristics, on the other hand, search a heuristic space with the aim of providing a more generalized solution to the particular optimisation problem. This is a fairly new technique that has proven to be successful in solving various combinatorial optimisation problems. There has not been much research into the use of hyper-heuristics to solve the school timetabling problem. This study investigates the use of a genetic algorithm selection perturbative hyper-heuristic for solving the school timetabling problem. A two-phased approach is taken, with the first phase focusing on hard constraints, and the second on soft constraints. The genetic algorithm uses tournament selection to choose parents, to which the mutation and crossover operators are applied. The genetic algorithm selection perturbative hyper-heuristic (GASPHH) was applied to five different school timetabling problems. The performance of the hyper-heuristic was compared to that of other methods applied to these problems, including a genetic algorithm that was applied directly to the solution space. GASPHH performed well over all five different types of school timetabling problems.
Highlights
Educational timetabling encompasses university examination, university course and school timetabling
Given the good performance of selection perturbative hyper-heuristics in solving other combinatorial optimisation problems, this paper investigates the use of a genetic algorithm selection perturbative hyper-heuristic (GASPHH) for the school timetabling problem
The study presented in this paper investigates the use of a selection perturbative hyperheuristic in solving the school timetabling problem
Summary
Educational timetabling encompasses university examination, university course and school timetabling. R Raghavjee & N Pillay effective in solving the other two types These three timetabling problems have been studied as different optimisation problems [19, 29, 30]. Previous research into solving the school timetabling problem using genetic algorithms revealed that the most effective mutation operators were problem dependent, i.e. different operators produced the best results for each school timetabling problem. Given the good performance of selection perturbative hyper-heuristics in solving other combinatorial optimisation problems, this paper investigates the use of a genetic algorithm selection perturbative hyper-heuristic (GASPHH) for the school timetabling problem. The following section provides an overview of the background to this study in terms of school timetabling, evolutionary algorithms, hyper-heuristics, and previous work applying hyper-heuristics to the school timetabling problem. Genetic algorithm selection perturbative hyper-heuristic for the school timetabling problem 41
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