Examination Timetable Research Articles

An Integer Linear Programming Model for the Examination Timetabling Problem: A Case Study of a University in Thailand

This paper considers the examination timetabling problem (ETTP) at the College of Industrial Technology (CIT) of the King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok in Thailand. A new integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for the ETTP at the CIT is presented. The objectives were to minimize both the number of examination days (the main objective) and the number of rooms used throughout the entire examination period (the secondary objective). In this paper, a course can have multiple sections, and an examination room can accommodate exams for more than one course section. To illustrate the proposed ILP model, real data on courses acquired from the CIT were used to generate two test problems: a small problem and a large problem. The small problem included 32 courses with 69 sections. The large problem included 73 courses with 341 sections, which was the real data required for generating the midterm examination timetable for all first‐year courses in the first semester of 2021. Both problems were solved using the CPLEX solver software. The results show that the proposed model could find an optimal examination timetable for the small problem with a computational time of 2 min and 46 s. It also could find a good feasible midterm examination timetable that satisfied the requirements of the CIT for the large problem within the 2‐h time limit, much less time than that compared to manual scheduling by the CIT’s administrative staff. The obtained midterm examination timetable required five examination days and could reduce 104 examination rooms compared to assigning each course section to a separate examination room. The proposed ILP model can be used in a real‐life situation and can be a good option to generate an optimal schedule or a good feasible schedule for examinations at the CIT or other institutions that have similar requirements.

Learners’ Characteristics and Cognitive Test Anxiety in Semester Examination among Students in National Open University of Nigeria

The paper focused on how learners’ characteristics influenced cognitive test anxiety among students of National Open University of Nigeria. The research design used for the study was cross-sectional survey, drawing on the population of 200,000 students at 200 to 400 levels, a sample of 460 were selected using simple sampling technique. Four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The instrument used for this study was Open and Distance Learners’ Cognitive Test Anxiety Questionnaire (ODLCTAQ) constructed by the researcher. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.83 using Cronbach Alpha statistics. Chi-square statistics was used to analyse the data in order to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that the influence of employment status on students’ cognitive test anxiety was not significant (ꭓ2 (6)= 3.028; P=.805) but that students’ academic discipline had significant influence on students’ cognitive test anxiety (ꭓ2 (12) = 25.942; P=.011). Also, geopolitical zone of NOUN students had significant influence on cognitive test anxiety (ꭓ2 (6)= 20.331; P=.002). It is therefore recommended that management of National Open University of Nigeria should schedule well-spaced out examination timetable in order to take care of the students who are civil servants and those that work in the private companies to have more time to prepare for examinations so as to reduce their cognitive test anxiety. Faculties should put in place various means of reducing the cognitive test anxieties of the students through effective facilitations, discussions and practical sessions.

Examination Timetable Scheduling Using Graph Coloring for Faculty of Science

Graph coloring is an important aspect of graph theory with great application in University timetable scheduling. The examination timetable scheduling maximizes the time and minimizes resources (venue and invigilators) to give effective output of the event. The constraint based approach method is implemented in scheduling examination timetable for Faculty of Science, Federal University Lokoja. Then the results on thirteen (13) departments give a 3-timeslot within twelve (12) days examination period with no students having two (2) examinations per day. In all, there is no conflict of venues and courses thereby giving an efficient scheduling process for the entire examination.

University Examination Timetable Scheduling Using Constructive Heuristic Compared to Genetic Algorithm

University Examination Timetable Scheduling Using Constructive Heuristic Compared to Genetic Algorithm

Examining Sustainability Education in Economics, Accounting and Finance in Tertiary Institutions in Ghana

Sustainability and sustainable development have aroused many debates and actions in all facets of human endeavors, including in developing countries. This study examined the extent to which tertiary business schools in Ghana embrace sustainability in their curricula. By using programs advertised on their respective institutions’ websites for the 2022-2023 academic year, and looking for programs that have sustainability or sustainability as a prefix. Additionally, the author relied on the examination timetable of the selected institutions for sustainability prefixes. The researcher finds that sustainability education in tertiary business faculties in Ghana is alarmingly low; despite the fact that corporate social responsibility as a course is taught in accounting courses, it is not enough to address sustainability issues in business faculties. This study recommends that it behooves the government and education regulators in partnership with large corporations to institute schemes that could entice business schools to include sustainability issues in their business education curricula.

PERANCANGAN SISTEM PENJADWALAN KULIAH DAN UJIAN SKRIPSI PROGRAM STUDI SISTEM INFORMASI BERBASIS WEB

University of Muhammadiyah Gorontalo is one of universities that are already implementing information system in several activities. These are constraints problems in scheduling the courses : the difficulty of making class schedule based on the willingness to teach, the difficulty of arranging a schedule that does not coincide, the difficulty of checking compliance credits, and delayed thesis exam schedule. In Planning and Scheduling System Lecture, Thesis Studies Program Information System, was using HTML and PHP. Method used here are Waterfall is hallmark craftsmanship of each phase in the waterfall must be completed before proceeding to the next phase. So that, the focus of each phase can be done in maximum of craftsmanship. Tests were performed using a system of black box testing. The results obtained in the research is a list Lecturer, Course List, List Lecture Room, Lecture Timetable and Examination Timetable. The scheduling systemis dynamic which means it can be updated.

A $$\beta $$-hill climbing optimizer for examination timetabling problem

Examination timetable is a non-trivial task for administrators of the academic institutions repeated every semester. In terms of optimization, examination timetabling is a combinatorial optimization problem concerned with assigning a set of exams to a predefined number of timeslots and rooms with accordance to a given constraints. In this paper, the extended version of hill climbing algorithm called $$\beta $$ -hill climbing is utilized to tackle the examination timetabling problem. $$\beta $$ -hill climbing is a new local search-based method that has two operators ( $$\beta $$ -operator and $${\mathcal {N}}$$ -operator) to iterate towards the optimal solution. The saturation degree heuristic method is utilized in the improvement loop of $$\beta $$ -hill climbing to ensure the solution feasibility. For experimental evaluation, Carter dataset is used comprising 12 instances selected from several real-world universities. Eight convergence scenarios are designed to sensitively analyze the behavior of the proposed algorithm. For comparative evaluations, the results produced by $$\beta $$ -hill climbing are comparatively comparable with previous methods that utilized the same Carter instances.

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

Examination timetabling problem is hard to solve due to its NP-hard nature, with a large number of constraints having to be accommodated. To deal with the problem effectually, frequently heuristics are used for constructing feasible examination timetable while meta-heuristics are applied for improving the solution quality. This paper presents the performances of graph heuristics and major trajectory metaheuristics or S-metaheuristics for addressing both capacitated and un-capacitated examination timetabling problem. For constructing the feasible solution, six graph heuristics are used. They are largest degree (LD), largest weighted degree (LWD), largest enrolment degree (LE), and three hybrid heuristic with saturation degree (SD) such as SD-LD, SD-LE, and SD-LWD. Five trajectory algorithms comprising of tabu search (TS), simulated annealing (SA), late acceptance hill climbing (LAHC), great deluge algorithm (GDA), and variable neighborhood search (VNS) are employed for improving the solution quality. Experiments have been tested on several instances of un-capacitated and capacitated benchmark datasets, which are Toronto and ITC2007 dataset respectively. Experimental results indicate that, in terms of construction of solution of datasets, hybridizing of SD produces the best initial solutions. The study also reveals that, during improvement, GDA, SA, and LAHC can produce better quality solutions compared to TS and VNS for solving both benchmark examination timetabling datasets.

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

Examination timetabling problem is hard to solve due to its NP-hard nature, with a large number of constraints having to be accommodated. To deal with the problem effectually, frequently heuristics are used for constructing feasible examination timetable while meta-heuristics are applied for improving the solution quality. This paper presents the performances of graph heuristics and major trajectory metaheuristics or S-metaheuristics for addressing both capacitated and un-capacitated examination timetabling problem. For constructing the feasible solution, six graph heuristics are used. They are largest degree (LD), largest weighted degree (LWD), largest enrolment degree (LE), and three hybrid heuristic with saturation degree (SD) such as SD-LD, SD-LE, and SD-LWD. Five trajectory algorithms comprising of tabu search (TS), simulated annealing (SA), late acceptance hill climbing (LAHC), great deluge algorithm (GDA), and variable neighborhood search (VNS) are employed for improving the solution quality. Experiments have been tested on several instances of un-capacitated and capacitated benchmark datasets, which are Toronto and ITC2007 dataset respectively. Experimental results indicate that, in terms of construction of solution of datasets, hybridizing of SD produces the best initial solutions. The study also reveals that, during improvement, GDA, SA, and LAHC can produce better quality solutions compared to TS and VNS for solving both benchmark examination timetabling datasets.

Development of an Interactive Tool based on Combining Graph Heuristic with Local Search for Examination Timetable Problem

Every university faces a lot of challenges to solve the examination timetabling problem because the problem is NP-hard and contains numerous institutional constraints. Although several attempts have been taken to address the issue, there are scarcities of interactive and automated tools in this domain that can schedule exams effectively by considering institutional resources, different constraints, and student enrolment in courses. This paper presents the development of a system as a graphical and interactive tool for examination timetabling problem. To develop the system, combining graph coloring heuristic and local search meta-heuristic algorithms are employed. The graph heuris-tic ordering is incorporated for constructing initial solution(s), whereas the local search meta-heuristic algorithms are used to produce quality exam timetables. Different constraints and objective functions from ITC2007 exam competition rules are adopted, as it is a complex real word exam timetabling problem. Finally, the system is tested on the ITC2007 exam benchmark dataset, and test results are presented. The main aspect of the system is to deliver an easy-to-handle tool that can generate quality timetables based on institutional demands and smoothly manage several key components. These components are collecting data associated with the enrolment of students in exams, defining hard and soft constraints, and allocating times and resources. Overall, this software can be used as a commercial scheduler in order to provide institutions with automated, accurate, and quick exam timetable.

An ant colony algorithm for universiti sultan zainal abidin examination timetabling problem

The real-life construction of examination timetabling problem is considered as a common problem that always encountered and experienced in educational institution whether in school, college, and university. This problem is usually experienced by the academic management department where they have trouble to handle complexity for assign examination into a suitable timeslot manually. In this paper, an algorithm approach of ant colony optimisation (ACO) is presented to find an effective solution for dealing with Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA) examination timetabling problems. A combination of heuristic with ACO algorithm contributes the development solution in order to simplify and optimize the pheromone occurrence of matrix updates which include the constraints problem. The implementation of real dataset instances from academic management is applied to the approach for generating the result of examination timetable. The result and performance that obtained will be used for further use to evaluate the quality and observe the solution whether our examination timetabling system is reliable and efficient than the manual management that can deal the constraints problem.

Solving Kolej Poly-Tech Mara Examination Timetabling Problem

Examination timetabling involves assigning the exams into timeslots and rooms, fitting the student numbers into suitable exam locations, and ensuring adequate rest gaps between exams for all students. In this study, the examination timetabling problem from Kolej Poly-Tech Mara (KPTM) Kuantan, is being investigated. The KPTM dataset is a capacitated problem with unique constraints when compared to the benchmark examination datasets from the literature. Currently, KPTM Kuantan uses proprietary software to generate the timetable. However, it requires manual process to determine whether the timetable satisfies the constraints. Furthermore, having no mathematical model makes it difficult to determine the timetable quality. The research aim is to develop a formal mathematical model and test the proposed model by producing an examination timetable. The generated timetable is compared with the KPTM Kuantan proprietary software examination timetable. The experiment shows that our result outperforms the timetable produced by KPTM while adhering to the hard constraints which the proprietary software fails to achieve.

Evaluating UMP Examination Timetable

This work presents a study of examination timetabling problem from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP). UMP operated from two campuses (i.e., Gambang and Pekan) and this formed new constraints for consideration in producing quality UMP examination timetable. These new constraints include schedule exams into appropriate campus and similar exams held in different campus must be assigned to the same timeslot. These constraints have not been examined before in the literature. UMP unable to evaluate examination timetable quality due to having no formal mathematical model. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the UMP examination timetabling constraints by developing a formal mathematical model and evaluate the current UMP examination timetable using the proposed formal mathematical model.

MODELLING THE UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA PAHANG EXAMINATION TIMETABLING PROBLEM

This paper presents a study of the Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) examination timetabling problem and its constraints. UMP currently situated in two campuses (Gambang and Pekan) which presents many challenges in producing examination timetable. The UMP examination timetabling problem consists of new constraints that have not been investigated before in the literature, that include scheduled exams into the appropriate campus. The additional constraints increase the level of difficulty in producing a high quality examination timetable. Additionally, having no formal mathematical model leads to difficulty in determining the quality of the produced examination timetable. This paper investigates the UMP examination timetabling constraints and develop the formal mathematical model to determine the quality of the generated examination timetable. The developed formal model able to evaluated the UMP examination timetable quality (produced by UMP’s proprietary system). The result reveals a high penalty value (bad quality) and unsatisfaction of the hard constraints.

Development of Web Application for University of Uyo Post UTME Examination Timetable

Development of Web Application for University of Uyo Post UTME Examination Timetable

A practical three‐phase ILP approach for solving the examination timetabling problem

AbstractA practical mathematical programming based approach is introduced for solving the examination timetabling problem at the German Jordanian University (GJU), whereby the complex process of acquiring a feasible examination timetable is simplified by subdividing it into three smaller sub‐problems (phases). Accordingly, the exams are initially allocated to time slots in phase one, the time slots are then allotted to days in phase two, and finally in phase three the exams are assigned to rooms based on the number of students taking each exam and capacities of the rooms. The solution for each phase is acquired based on an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation, while satisfying a set of hard constraints that ensure comfortable exam timetables for all students and meet the desired requirements set by GJU administrative staff. Furthermore, the solver can be controlled and launched from a student information system named MyGJU Admin, which enabled registrars at the university to easily, quickly, and accurately generate final exam timetables in several standard formats. Moreover, the approach was validated based on recent GJU registration information as well as real‐world benchmark data.

Examination Timetabling Problem: A Case Study

Background/Objectives: This paper presents a real-world examination-timetabling problem associated with Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) in Malaysia. We aim to develop a mathematical model that considers the main requirements to produce the examination timetable at UMT and attempts to optimize the assignment of exam into room and timeslot as preferred by the communities whilst satisfying the requirements mentioned. Methods/Analysis: The main requirements is modelled using Binary Integer Programming method and is validated using a self-develop dataset with two different preferences assignment and the computational results are reported and analyzed directly using the AIMMS Software with CPLEX 12.6.3 solver. Findings: The results shows that the newly developed models have successfully produce an examination timetable that completely solve all basic requirements addresses by the university and through the application of the models, we manage to maximize the preferences of the communities with the assignment of exam into the best preferred slots. Novelty/Improvement: These results will be used as reference for developing a more sophisticated examination-timetable model that will incorporate more demanding and challenging constraints as well as the preferences from community, which will be significantly better than those constructed using the existing manual system especially in terms of solving all requirements which cannot be easily done using the former system in UMT.

Solving Timetabling problems using Genetic Algorithm Technique

The timetabling problem is always a difficult task which comes up every calendar year in educational institutions. More especially if it has to be done manually. Various institutions of learning across the country are being faced with a lot of difficulties preparing examination timetable. Most of this problems are usually attributed to the constant increase in the number of students and courses while having limited resources (exam classes) to use in scheduling. The aim of this paper is to propose the use of genetic algorithm technique to develop an easier, effective and efficient timetable using in order to ease the problems faced during scheduling of examination. Although, there are various scheduling techniques, but the use of Genetic Algorithm was based on the fact that, the algorithm are robust there by properly fits into complex problem space. The new method is aimed at providing a more flexible timetable representation and proved to be efficient in real life applications..

Universiti Malaysia Pahang examination timetabling problem: scheduling invigilators

This paper presents a real-world examination timetabling problem from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Malaysia. The problem involves assigning invigilators to examination rooms. This problem has received less attention than the examination timetabling problem from the research community partly because no data sets are available in the literature. In modelling, and solving, this problem we assume that there is already an examination timetable in place (this was the subject of our previous work) and the task is to assign invigilators to that timetable. The contributions of this paper are to formally define the invigilator scheduling problem and to present a constructive algorithm that is able to produce good quality solutions that are superior to the solutions produced when using the university's current software. We also include additional constraints taking into account the comments made by the invigilators, which the current system fails to capture. The model we present, we believe, accurately reflects the real-world problem, capturing various aspects of the problem that have not been presented before in the scientific literature. Moreover, the proposed approach adheres to all hard constraints, which the university's current system fails to do.

A constructive approach to examination timetabling based on adaptive decomposition and ordering

In this study, we investigate an adaptive decomposition and ordering strategy that automatically divides examinations into difficult and easy sets for constructing an examination timetable. The examinations in the difficult set are considered to be hard to place and hence are listed before the ones in the easy set in the construction process. Moreover, the examinations within each set are ordered using different strategies based on graph colouring heuristics. Initially, the examinations are placed into the easy set. During the construction process, examinations that cannot be scheduled are identified as the ones causing infeasibility and are moved forward in the difficult set to ensure earlier assignment in subsequent attempts. On the other hand, the examinations that can be scheduled remain in the easy set. Within the easy set, a new subset called the boundary set is introduced to accommodate shuffling strategies to change the given ordering of examinations. The proposed approach, which incorporates different ordering and shuffling strategies, is explored on the Carter benchmark problems. The empirical results show that the performance of our algorithm is broadly comparable to existing constructive approaches.