School Timetabling Research Articles

A Technique of Crossover and Mutation to solve School Time Table Problem using Genetic Algorithm

International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering (A UGC Approved and indexed with DOI, ICI and Approved, DPI Digital Library) is one of the leading and growing open access, peer-reviewed, monthly, and scientific research journal for scientists, engineers, research scholars, and academicians, which gains a foothold in Asia and opens to the world, aims to publish original, theoretical and practical advances in Computer Science,Information Technology, Engineering (Software, Mechanical, Civil, Electronics & Electrical), and all interdisciplinary streams of Computing Sciences. It intends to disseminate original, scientific, theoretical or applied research in the field of Computer Sciences and allied fields. It provides a platform for publishing results and research with a strong empirical component. It aims to bridge the significant gap between research and practice by promoting the publication of original, novel, industry-relevant research.

Optimization in timetabling in schools using a mathematical model, local search and Iterated Local Search procedures

Abstract This paper addresses the school timetabling problem, which consists of defining the date and time in which classes will be given by teachers in educational institutions. For this purpose, a tool that uses Operational Research (OR) techniques was developed, focused on generating and optimizing Elementary and High School timetables, taking into account teachers’ preferences for certain days or for sequenced (twinned) classes. Conductive to solving the problem, a Non Linear Binary Integer Programming mathematical model (NLBIP) and Local Search (LS) and Iterated Local Search (ILS) procedures were comparatively applied. A real problem with 14 timetables of public schools in the city of Araucária (in Paraná State, Brazil) was analyzed. The results indicate that the computational time required by the mathematical model is feasible for the problems in question. The ILS technique has the potential for testing larger scale problems, as it presents a dispersion of 3.5% to 7.7% relative to the optimal solution (obtained by the NLBIP) and a computational time that is 15 to 338 times faster.

Interventions integrating health and academic interventions to prevent substance use and violence: a systematic review and synthesis of process evaluations

BackgroundWithin increasingly constrained school timetables, interventions that integrate academic and health education to reduce substance use and violence may hold promise as a category of intervention that can positively affect both academic and health outcomes. There are no current systematic reviews exploring the effectiveness of such interventions or factors that affect their implementation.MethodsA total of 19 bibliographic databases and 32 websites were searched. References were also extracted from the reference lists of included studies, and experts and authors were contacted to identify relevant studies.We included reports with no restrictions on language or date. References were screened on title/abstract and those not thus excluded were screened on full report. Data extraction and appraisal followed the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre and Cochrane tools. Extracted process data were qualitatively meta-synthesised for common themes.ResultsSeventy-eight thousand four hundred fifty-one unique references were identified, and 62 reports were included. A total of 16 reports (reporting on 15 studies of 12 interventions) evaluated process. Key facilitators of integrated academic and health curricula were supportive senior management and alignment of the intervention with school ethos; a positive teaching environment, including positive perceptions around the ability to be flexible in the adaptation and delivery of integrated academic and health curricula; positive pre-existing student and teacher attitudes towards intervention content; and parental support of interventions, largely through reinforcement of messaging at home. Important barriers were over-burdened teachers, with little time to learn and implement integrated curricula.ConclusionSeveral useful facilitating and inhibiting factors linked to the implementation of interventions that integrate academic and health education for reduced substance use and/or violence were identified, providing tentative but insightful evidence of context-specific issues that may impact intervention success. However, overall, there is still a considerable gap in our understanding of how to achieve the successful implementation of these interventions.

Validating Fitbit Zip for monitoring physical activity of children in school: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundModern activity trackers, including the Fitbit Zip, enable the measurement of both the step count as well as physical activity (PA) intensities. However, there is a need for field-based validation studies in a variety of populations before using trackers for research. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the validity of Fitbit Zip step count, moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary minutes, in different school segments in 3rd grade students.MethodsThird grade students (N = 147, aged 9–10 years) wore a Fitbit Zip and an ActiGraph GT3x-BT accelerometer simultaneously on a belt for five days during school hours. The number of steps, minutes of MVPA and sedentary time during class time, physical education lessons and recess were extracted from both devices using time filters, based on the information from school time tables obtained from class teachers. The validity of the Fitbit Zip in different school segments was assessed using Bland-Altman analysis and Spearman’s correlation.ResultsThere was a strong correlation in the number of steps in all in-school segments between the two devices (r = 0.85–0.96, P < 0.001). The Fitbit Zip overestimated the number of steps in all segments, with the greatest overestimation being present in physical education lessons (345 steps). As for PA intensities, the agreement between the two devices in physical education and recess was moderate for MVPA minutes (r = 0.56 and r = 0.72, P < 0.001, respectively) and strong for sedentary time (r = 0.85 and r = 0.87, P < 0.001, respectively). During class time, the correlation was weak for MVPA minutes (r = 0.24, P < 0.001) and moderate for sedentary time (r = 0.57, P < 0.001). For total in-school time, the correlation between the two devices was strong for steps (r = 0.98, P < 0.001), MVPA (r = 0.80, P < 0.001) and sedentary time (r = 0.94, P < 0.001).ConclusionIn general, the Fitbit Zip can be considered a relatively accurate device for measuring the number of steps, MVPA and sedentary time in students in a school-setting. However, in segments where sedentary time dominates (e.g. academic classes), a research-grade accelerometer should be preferred.

REDOSPLAT: A readable domain-specific language for timetabling requirements definition

Automatic creation of school timetables is a complex problem when it involves defining specific constraints and requirements. This paper presents a domain-specific language called REDOSPLAT which supports such definitions in a readable format. REDOSPLAT can be used when timetable programs with a graphical user interface are limited or too cluttered to express specific domain features. It uses customised, readable notation instead of technically oriented data formats which are usually used in timetable problems. The desired timetabling requirements are defined using sentences whose syntax is close to the syntax of spoken language. This paper encompasses the entire language syntax and semantics, the way a sentence is transformed into data structures which describe timetabling requirements, and the way the obtained data structures are transformed into models needed for different problem-solving algorithms. For the latter, REDOSPLAT is using integer linear programming to resolve the timetabling problem.

Influence of School Based Policies on Internal Efficiency in Public Day Secondary Schools in Nyatike Sub County, Kenya

Policies formed at the school level have tended to interfere with national agenda universal schooling in many countries of the world. A study therefore was carried out on the influence of school-based policies on internal efficiency in public day secondary schools in Nyatike Sub County, Kenya. The study was guided by three objectives; students’ grade to grade promotion policy, schools time management policy and school time tabling. The design employed in this study was descriptive survey. The researcher targeted all 52 secondary schools in Nyatike sub-county. Stratified random sampling was used to arrive at the chosen samples for the study. The school-based policies analyzed were found to affect the internal efficiency in education in public secondary schools. The government’s policy of no repetition, was found be flowed by all the schools as they had their own students’ grade to grade promotion policy based on students’ performance in internal examinations. All schools visited were found to be using exams for promotions. Ninety point zero three percent of the students responded that rules put by schools on student grade to grade affects their wellbeing and stay in school. Sixty one point five three percent of the students sampled believed student grade to grade policy has an impact on repetition of students. On time management policy, a majority of the schools did not have strategic plans to guide the operations in schools. However, the schools had timetables as required by the ministry of education. No effort was put in place to assist weak students in bettering in their academics to meet the set school targets for promotion. In conclusion the internal school policies on grade to grade promotion have affected greatly the internal efficiency in education in Nyatike sub-county. The inefficiency index of 1.3 was found. There is poor implantation of time management policy and there is a lot of waste of time in the afternoons in the sub-county. It is recommended that close monitoring be done by the sub-county director of education office on implementation of no student repetition policy.

Does integrated academic and health education prevent substance use? Systematic review and meta-analyses.

Prevention of substance (alcohol, tobacco, illegal/legal drug) use in adolescents is a public health priority. As the scope for school-based health education is constrained in school timetables, interventions integrating academic and health education have gained traction in the UK and elsewhere, though evidence for their effectiveness remains unclear. We sought to synthesize the effectiveness of interventions integrating academic and health education for the prevention of substance use. We searched 19 databases between November and December 2015, among other methods. We included randomized trials of interventions integrating academic and health education targeting school students aged 4-18 and reporting substance use outcomes. We excluded interventions for specific health-related subpopulations (e.g., children with behavioural difficulties). Data were extracted independently in duplicate. Outcomes were synthesized by school key stage (KS) using multilevel meta-analyses, for substance use, overall and by type. We identified 7 trials reporting substance use. Interventions reduced substance use generally in years 7-9 (KS3) based on 5 evaluations (d=-0.09, 95% CI [-0.17, -0.01], I2 =35%), as well as in years 10-11 (KS4) based on 3 evaluations (-0.06, [-0.09, -0.02]; I2 =0%). Interventions were broadly effective for reducing specific alcohol, tobacco, and drug use in both KS groups. Evidence quality was highly variable. Findings for years 3-6 and 12-13 could not be meta-analysed, and we could not assess publication bias. Interventions appear to have a small but significant effect reducing substance use. Specific methods of integrating academic and health education remain poorly understood.

The Effect of Extensive Reading on Vocabulary Acquisition

This study investigated the benefits of extensive reading to learners in acquiring vocabulary and improving their attitude towards reading. It examined the effectiveness of using a series of Graded Readers and whether it is instrumental in achieving vocabulary acquisition. The sample of the study consisted of 30 students aged 14 from one intact class in form two of a Malaysian school. A treatment was administered for two weeks which consisted of extensive reading of graded books for thirty minutes outside the school timetable. A quasi-experiment design was used to measure the effectiveness of extensive reading. The instruments included pre-test and post-test, interview and questionnaire. The results of the data analysis indicated that using Graded Readers in extensive reading helps in improving and acquiring vocabulary among the students. Extensive reading also assisted in promoting positive attitude towards reading and this was seen through the analysis of the questionnaire and interview. The study concludes that extensive reading using Graded Readers brings benefit to the students’ enrichment of vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, it is also discovered that these students exhibited positive attitude toward reading.

An Assignment Problem and Its Application in Education Domain: A Review and Potential Path

This paper presents a review pertaining to assignment problem within the education domain, besides looking into the applications of the present research trend, developments, and publications. Assignment problem arises in diverse situations, where one needs to determine an optimal way to assign n subjects to m subjects in the best possible way. With that, this paper classified assignment problems into two, which are timetabling problem and allocation problem. The timetabling problem is further classified into examination, course, and school timetabling problems, while the allocation problem is divided into student-project allocation, new student allocation, and space allocation problems. Furthermore, the constraints, which are of hard and soft constraints, involved in the said problems are briefly elaborated. In addition, this paper presents various approaches to address various types of assignment problem. Moreover, direction and potential paths of problem solving based on the latest trend of approaches are also highlighted. As such, this review summarizes and records a comprehensive survey regarding assignment problem within education domain, which enhances one’s understanding concerning the varied types of assignment problems, along with various approaches that serve as solution.

Korelacija i timski rad u nastavi – holistički pristup učenju i poučavanju

U radu se teorijski i empirijski analizira kod naših znanstvenika neopravdano zapostavljena,a istovremeno izuzetno aktualna, problematika korelacije i timske nastave kao osnovnihpretpostavki dosezanja holizma u učenju i poučavanju. Kroz naglašen holistički pristup uklopljenu suvremeno konstruktivističko poimanje nastavnog procesa, analiziraju se značaj, vrste,doprinosi te zahtjevi i osnovne pretpostavke kvalitetnog provođenja korelacije i timskog radau nastavi. Empirijska analiza mišljenja osnovnoškolskih i srednjoškolskih nastavnika (skupinaispitanika iz 10 urbanih i ruralnih škola Zadarske županije: 5 OŠ + 5 SŠ; N = 106) obuhvaćautvrđivanje pojavnih oblika korelacije u nastavnoj praksi te određivanje njihovih čestina,procjenjivanje adekvatnosti i dostatnosti nastavničkih kompetencija za izvođenje korelacijaizgrađenih kroz različite kontekste obrazovanja/učenja (formalni, neformalni, informalni)te analiziranje doprinosa korelacija kvaliteti nastave, kao i sugestija nastavnika o mogućimnačinima unapređenja njihova provođenja. Također se utvrđuju čestine izvođenja timske nastave,inicijatori njenog osmišljavanja i realizacije, praktični doprinosi takve vrste rada te nastavničkesugestije o njenom mogućem unapređenju. Temeljem pokazatelja osnovne deskriptivne statistikepodatci su poredbeno analizirani te dodatno komentirani, a kvalitativnom analizom podatakanastavničkih mišljenja o doprinosima i mogućim načinima unapređenja izvođenja korelacija itimske nastave dobivena je zaokružena slika ispitivane problematike. Time ovaj rad predstavljateorijski i empirijski doprinos istraživanju holističkog pristupa nastavnom procesu krozprovođenje korelacija i timske nastave. Iako su nastavnici svjesni njihovih višestrukih pozitivnihdoprinosa kvaliteti nastave, rezultati su pokazali nedovoljnu zastupljenost takvih načina rada unastavnoj praksi, kao i moguće uzroke takvog stanja: nedostatna i neadekvatna osposobljenostnastavnika, nepoticajna okolina, nedovoljna suradnja između nastavnika, neadekvatnostpostojećih nastavnih planova i programa te školskih kurikuluma, kao i školske arhitekture irasporeda sati. Upravo bi uvažavanje nastavničkih sugestija moglo doprinijeti prevladavanjupostojećih zapreka i unapređenju izvođenja korelacija i timske nastave kao posebno vrijednihnačina i putova integrativnog, holističkog učenja i poučavanja

Generalist and specialist primary music teachers’ uses of nonverbal and verbal support during music practice.

Generalist teachers, also called nonspecialist teachers (Henley, 2011), are teachers in primary schools who teach music, but have not studied education at a university or a conservatory, nor attended any (or only a few) preservice or in-service teacher training courses on education. Many studies report much primary school teaching of is provided by generalist teachers (Henley, 2011; Pascoe et al., 2005). Generalist teaching is a wide-spread phenomena in Australia (Pascoe et al., 2005), Great Britain (Henley, 2011; Holden & Button, 2006; Seddon & Biasutti, 2008), North America (Sinclair, Jeanneret, & O'Toole, 2009), and European countries (Eurydice, 2009), including Germany (Hammel, 2011), where this research study is based. The amount of lessons taught by generalist teachers at German primary schools ranges between 72% and 86% (Hammel, 2011) of all lessons in primary school. In German schools, a specialist teacher cannot always be found to act as a helping mentor for the generalist teachers (Hammel, 2011). Furthermore, lessons taught by generalist teachers are often cancelled (Bahr, Fuchs, Gallus, & Jank, 2004; Fuchs & Brunner, 2006). Removing (and arts) lessons from a primary school's seems to be common practice, when resources (e.g., time, finances) decrease. Therefore, music and the arts are frequently considered to be the 'frills subject' in a school's timetable (Garvis & Pendergast, 2012, p. 107). The main problems generalist primary teachers face are little musical training (abilities; Heyworth, 2011; Pascoe et al., 2005) and that they often lack the confidence to teach the practical aspects of in the classroom (Henley, 2011, p. 25). A lack of confidence to teach among generalist teachers has been revealed as prevalent by many qualitative studies regardless of their site or setting.1 Further research on generalist teachers stated generalist teachers are often lacking self-confidence to teach (Garvis & Pendergast, 2012; Hennessy, 2000; Mills, 1989; Schellberg, 2005). Other common problems of generalist teachers are their lack of personal experiences and the overall lack of priority for in primary schools (Russell-Bowie, 2009). Advantages of generalist teaching are the generalist teacher's knowledge and awareness of each child in the class, compared with a nonclassroom teacher. A generalist teacher may adjust musical learning conditions fit best to their students' interests and needs. Another advantage of generalist teachers who are teachers is they do not have to adhere to the school's to practice music. They have more capacities and can fit in practice in the many times a week.To help generalist teachers to teach these practical aspects of music, adequate professional development measures need to be researched and established in initial teacher training and during their time as qualified teachers. Thus, the abilities and the confidence of generalist teachers to teach can be improved (Biasutti, Hennessy, & De Vugt-Jansen, 2015; Henley, 2011; Holden & Button, 2006; Schellberg, 2016; Telemachou, 2007). One of the few studies documents the quality of teaching in primary school is the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills report (2009). It does not distinguish between generalist and specialist teachers, but it reports that: Only half the teaching in art, and religious education was good or outstanding. The best teaching showed teachers understood the particular demands of individual subjects in relation to pupils' learning. (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills, 2009, p. 5).Nonetheless, the question is which teacher training approaches might improve the learning outcome of generalist teachers? …

A Hidden Markov Model Approach to the Problem of Heuristic Selection in Hyper-Heuristics with a Case Study in High School Timetabling Problems.

Operations research is a well-established field that uses computational systems to support decisions in business and public life. Good solutions to operations research problems can make a large difference to the efficient running of businesses and organisations and so the field often searches for new methods to improve these solutions. The high school timetabling problem is an example of an operations research problem and is a challenging task which requires assigning events and resources to time slots subject to a set of constraints. In this article, a new sequence-based selection hyper-heuristic is presented that produces excellent results on a suite of high school timetabling problems. In this study, we present an easy-to-implement, easy-to-maintain, and effective sequence-based selection hyper-heuristic to solve high school timetabling problems using a benchmark of unified real-world instances collected from different countries. We show that with sequence-based methods, it is possible to discover new best known solutions for a number of the problems in the timetabling domain. Through this investigation, the usefulness of sequence-based selection hyper-heuristics has been demonstrated and the capability of these methods has been shown to exceed the state of the art.

LEISURE UTILIZATION CONSTRAINTS AS PERCEIVED BY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF UYO, NIGERIA

The purpose of this study was to investigate leisure utilization constraints as perceived by undergraduate students of University of Uyo. Five indicators were adopted which were lack of self-skill, lack of time, anxiety, academic workload and religious activities. From these, five objectives were formulated with subsequent research questions and hypotheses. The study adopted a survey design with 278 respondents selected from six faculties using stratified and clustered sampling technique. A self-developed questionnaire validated by experts with a reliability co-efficient of .78 was used as the main instrument for data collection. The data generated were analyzed using percentages and mean to answer the research questions, while chi-square statistical tool was used to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The result of the study revealed that self-skill, lack of time, anxiety, academic workload and religious activities were perceived as significant constraints to leisure utilization among undergraduate students of the University of Uyo. This finding support earlier research work. It was recommended that the school directorate of sport should organized sensitization on available leisure activities requiring little or no special skills, proper scheduling of leisure activities compatible with the school time table, the school should provide a framework for emergency healthcare particularly for sport injuries and individuals should take responsibilities for their own health by enjoying the leisure time. Also, school authority should work in collaboration with various religious leaders within the campus to establish control and effective time management. Article visualizations:

Parallel Genetic Algorithm for High School Timetabling

Parallel Genetic Algorithm for High School Timetabling

Parallel local search algorithms for high school timetabling problems

High school timetabling consists in assigning meetings between classes and teachers, with the goal of minimizing the violation of specific soft requirements. This family of problems has been frequently considered in the literature, but few strategies employing parallelism have been proposed. In this exploratory study, we consider two different parallel frameworks and present a thorough computational study in order to understand algorithmic decisions that are closely related to performance. Our best algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms for variants of the problem considered, indicating both the efficiency and the flexibility of the method.

Effective local search algorithms for high school timetabling problems

This paper addresses the high school timetabling problem. The problem consists in building weekly timetables for meetings between classes and teachers with the goal of minimizing violations of specific requirements. In the last decades, several mixed-integer programs have been proposed and tested for this family of problems. However, medium and large size instances are still not effectively solved by these programs using state-of-the-art solvers and the scientific community has given special attention to the devising of alternative soft computing algorithms. In this paper, we propose a soft computing approach based on Iterated Local Search and Variable Neighborhood Search metaheuristic frameworks. Our algorithms incorporate new neighborhood structures and local search routines to perform an effective search. We validated the proposed algorithms on variants of the problem using seven public instances and a new dataset with 34 real-world instances including large cases. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art approaches in both cases, finding the best solutions in 38 out of the 41 tested instances.

Courses timetabling problem by minimizing the number of less preferable time slots

In an organization with large number of resources, timetabling is one of the most important factors of management strategy and the one that is most prone to errors or issues. Timetabling the perfect organization plan is quite a task, thus the aid of operations research or management strategy approaches is obligation. Timetabling in educational institutions can roughly be categorized into school timetabling, course timetabling, and examination timetabling, which differ from each other by their entities involved such as the type of events, the kind of institution, and the type and the relative influence of constraints. Education timetabling problem is generally a kind of complex combinatorial problem consisting of NP-complete sub-problems. It is required that the requested timetable fulfills a set of hard and soft constraints of various types. In this paper we consider a courses timetabling problem at university whose objective is to minimize the number of less preferable time slots. We mean by less preferable time slots are those devoted in early morning (07.00 – 07.50 AM) or those in the late afternoon (17.00 – 17.50 AM) that in fact beyond the working hour, those scheduled during the lunch break (12.00 – 12.50 AM), those scheduled in Wednesday 10.00 – 11.50 AM that coincides with Department Meeting, and those in Saturday which should be in fact devoted for day-off. In some cases, timetable with a number of activities scheduled in abovementioned time slots are commonly encountered. The courses timetabling for the Educational Program of General Competence (PPKU) students at odd semester at Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) has been modelled in the framework of the integer linear programming. We solved the optimization problem heuristically by categorizing all the groups into seven clusters.

Using Digital Storytelling to Inform Students About Bullying: Results of a Pilot Program

The study presents the results of a pilot program in which digital storytelling was used in order to inform fourth-grade students about bullying. The constructivist principles concerning the learning process, and in particular, the requirement of students' active participation, provided the necessary framework. Students created their own digital stories about bullying, while the researcher, although present, avoided to intervene, to guide or to lecture students to a great extent. The intervention was short in duration and easily applied, without altering the school's timetable. Qualitative analysis of the data indicates that, through their digital stories, students were able to grasp the main aspects of bullying and how they should react, but the role of bystanders was unclear to them. The results of the study might prove useful in the formation of a more comprehensive anti-bullying program.

Solving the high school timetabling problem using a hybrid cat swarm optimization based algorithm

In this contribution we present the application of a hybrid cat swarm optimization (CSO) based algorithm for solving the school timetabling problem. This easy to use, efficient and fast algorithm is a hybrid variation of the classic CSO algorithm. Its efficiency and performance is demonstrated by conducting experiments with real-world input data. This data, collected from various high schools in Greece, has also been used as test instances by many other researchers in their publications. Results reveal that this hybrid CSO based algorithm, applied to the same school timetabling test instances using the same evaluation criteria, exhibits better performance in less computational time compared to the majority of other existing approaches, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs), Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), Simulated Annealing (SA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Fish Swarm (AFS). The algorithm's main process constitutes a variation of the classic CSO algorithm, properly altered so as to be applied for solving the school timetabling problem. This process contains the main algorithmic differences of the proposed approach compared to other algorithms presented in the respective literature.

MaxSAT-based large neighborhood search for high school timetabling

High School Timetabling (HSTT) is a well known and wide spread problem. The problem consists of coordinating resources (e.g. teachers, rooms), times, and events (e.g. lectures) with respect to various constraints. Unfortunately, HSTT is hard to solve and just finding a feasible solution for simple variants of HSTT have been proven to be NP-complete. We propose a new algorithm for HSTT which combines local search with a novel maxSAT-based large neighborhood search. A local search algorithm is used to drive an initial solution into a local optimum and then more powerful large neighborhood search (LNS) techniques based on maxSAT are used to further improve the solution. We prove the effectiveness of our approach with experimental results on instances taken from the Third International Timetabling Competition 2011 and the XHSTT-2014 benchmark archive. We were able to model 27 out of 39 instances. The remaining 12 instances were not modeled because the currently used maxSAT formulation for XHSTT does not support resource assignments in general. For the instances which could be modeled, our algorithm shows good performance when compared to other XHSTT state-of-the-art solvers and for several instances new best known upper bounds have been computed.