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Generating University Course Timetable Using Genetic Algorithms and Local

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Article · November 2008

DOI: 10.1109/ICCIT.2008.379

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Salwani Abdullah Hamza Turabieh

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 Third 2008 International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology
Generating University Course Timetable Using
Genetic Algorithms and Local Search
Salwani Abdullah, Hamza Turabieh
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Univesiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor D.E, Malaysia
salwani,hamza@ftsm.ukm.my
ABSTRACT
In this paper we establish a new algorithm based
on Genetic Algorithms (GA) and sequential local
search to solve course timetabling problem.
Universities are challenged to arise in number of
complexity, their resources and events are becoming
harder to schedule. Timetabling is a kind of problem
in which events (classes, exams, courses, etc) have to
be arranged into a number of timeslots such that
conflicts in using a given set of resources are avoided.
We perform preliminary experiments on standard
benchmark course timetable problems and able to
produce promising results.
I. INTRODUCTION
University Course Timetabling Problems (UCTPs) is
an NPhard problem, which is very difficult to solve by
conventional methods and the amount of computation
required to find optimal solution increases
exponentially with problem size. The main idea of this
problem is to assign a set of lectures to rooms and time
periods satisfying a number of constraints. The set of
constraints are usually divided in two sets: hard
constraints and soft constraints. Hard constraints have
a higher priority than soft. The objective of this
problem is to satisfy the hard constraints and to
minimise the violation of the soft constraints. It is
therefore necessary to use efficient search methods to
produce optimal or near optimal timetable that satisfy
the constraints. A large number of diverse methods
have been already proposed in the literature for solving
timetabling problems. These methods come from a
number of scientific disciplines like Operations
Research, Artificial Intelligence, and Computational
Intelligence [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and can be divided
into four categories:
1) Sequential Methods, that deals timetabling
problems as graph problems. Generally, they
order the events using domain-specific
978-0-7695-3407-7/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE 246
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DOI 10.1109/ICCIT.2008.379
heuristics and then assign the events
sequentially into valid time slots in such a
way that no constraints are violated for each
timeslot [7].
2) Constraint Based Methods, according to
which a timetabling problem is modeled as a
set of variables (events) to which values
(resources such as teachers and rooms) have
to be assigned in order to satisfy a number of
hard and soft constraints [8].
3) Cluster Methods, in which the problem is
divided into a number of events sets. Each set
is defined so that it satisfies all hard
constraints. Then, the sets are assigned to real
time slots to satisfy the soft constraints as well
[9].
4) Meta-heuristic methods, such as genetic
algorithms (GAs), simulated annealing, tabu
search, and other heuristic approaches, that
are mostly inspired from nature, and apply
nature-like processes to solutions or
populations of solutions, in order to evolve
them towards optimality [1], [10], [11], [3],
[4]. GAs have been used for solving
timetabling problems since 1990 [11].
Since then, the literature has hosted a large number
of papers presenting evolutionary methods and
applications on such problems with significant success
[12].
The paper is organised as follows, the next section
introduces the university course timetable problem
with a set of all hard and soft constraints. In section III
we represent the main concepts about genetic
algorithms and the basic operation of GA. Section IV
introduces the sequential local search algorithm.
Section V presents the proposed algorithm and repair
function. The simulation results are represented in
section VI, and finally conclusion and future work are
represented in section VII.
 II. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
The general timetable problem can be expressed in
the following way: a number of events must be
timetabled by associating them with timeslots. In
university course timetable, a set of events (courses) is
scheduled into a fixed number of rooms and timeslots
within a week. In this paper, we test our method on the
problem instances introduced by Socha et al [13]. The
problem presents a set of N courses to be scheduled in
5 days of 9 periods each, which time T = 45 timeslots,
a set R rooms (each room have a set of F features and
capacity), a set of M students and a set of features
required by courses. Each student attends a subset of
courses. Solutions in which all courses are assigned to
periods and rooms and satisfy all hard constraints are
called feasible solutions. The hard constraints
considered for this problem are:
1) No student can be assigned to more than one
course at the same time.
2) The room should satisfy the features required
by the course.
3) The number of students attending the course
should be less than or equal to the capacity of
the room.
4) No more than one course is allowed at a
timeslot in each room.
The soft constraints considered for this problem are:
1) A student has to attend only one course in a
day.
2) A student has to attend more than two courses
consecutively.
3) A student has to attend a course in last period
in any day.
The objective of this problem is to satisfy the hard
constraints and to minimise the violation of the soft
constraints.
III. GENETIC ALGORITHMS
A Genetic Algorithm (GAs) is a parallel and
evolutionary search algorithm based on the Darwinian
evolution theory [14]. It is used to search large,
nonlinear solution space where expert knowledge is
lacking or difficult to encode. Moreover it requires no
gradient information, evolves from one population to
another and produces multiple optima rather than
single local one. These characteristics make GA a well-
suited tool for university course timetable problem,
also GAs have been successfully used to solve system
identification, signal processing and path planning
problems [15], [16], [17], [18], which attracts more and
more attentions of researchers and practitioners.
A. Evolutionary Process
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The evolution process starts from a population of
random individuals. It is known as a generation. In
each generation, the fitness of the whole population is
evaluated, multiple individuals are stochastically
selected from the current population based on their
(fitness), modified (mutated or recombined) to form a
new population, which becomes current in the next
iteration of the algorithm. GA is consider one of the
most powerful techniques in evolutionary algorithms,
so GA has been employed as a tool that can handle a
very complex search space with a high probability of
success in finding the optimal solutions [19].
B. Representation
In all evolutionary algorithm techniques, it is
required to transfer the problem from its real domain to
the domain of EA. GAs offer different kinds of
representations. In [19] Holland introduced the binary
string representation. In [20] Michalewicz showed that
for real-valued numerical optimization problems,
floating-point representations are more efficient and
can lead to faster convergence to the optimal solution
domain [20]. This representation scheme is closer to
the real problem domain and can achieve higher
performance and accuracy. To summarize how genetic
algorithms work, assume that Pop(k) and Offspring(k)
are the parents and offspring in current generation t;
the general structure of a genetic algorithm procedure
can be described by the simple pseudo code as in
Figure 1.
Fig. 1. Pseudo code for genetic algorithm
IV. LOCAL SEARCH
Inserting local search within genetic algorithm is
considered an effective way to produce high quality
solution than using genetic algorithms alone [21], [22],
[23]. We applied a sequential search algorithm to
improve the timetable by reducing the number of soft
constraint violations. The pseudo code for the local
search as depicted in Figure 2.
Fig. 2. Pseudo code for local search

V. APPLYING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

The algorithm used in this paper is shown in a

schematic diagram as in Figure 3. At the beginning of
the algorithm, a conflict matrix [21] is created. The
matrix has dimensions N by N which is used to enable
efficient conflict checking and eliminates the number
of students as a factor in the complexity of the
problem.

Initial population (Chromosomes) and Representation:

• Initial population is formed using a constructive
heuristic for each timetable, which starts from blank
timetable. The construction of feasible timetable that
satisfy all hard constraints is achieved by adding or Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of GA and local search algorithm
removing appropriate events (courses) from the table
based on room availability [24], [25], without
considering any of the soft constraints violation
through this step, until the hard constraints are met.
This approach produces chromosomes as shown in
Figure 4, each of which represent a timetable.
Encoding the timetables, where N is the number of
population size. The length of each chromosome
equals to the number of events to be held, and each
gene represents the timeslot for corresponding event. Fig. 4. Genetic representation of timetable
• Genetic Operation: The genetic operator for our
approach is defined as follows: – Crossover: The main genetic operator,
– Selection: This process guides the single point crossover has been applied. This
evolutionary algorithm to the optimal solution operation performs single point recombination
by preferring chromosomes with high fitness. between pairs of chromosomes and returns the
The chromosomes evolve through successive parent chromosomes after mating. Crossover
uses tournament selection method, which point is chosen randomly from the domain (1,
select K individuals (timetables). This process 2, 3, …, L) where L is the number of
is repeated as often as individuals must be chromosome length (events). After that, keep
chosen. The parameter of tournament the gene before the crossover point unchanged
selection is the tournament size K. K can take and swap the gene after the crossover position
values ranging from 2 to P, where P is the between parents.
number of individuals in population. – Mutation: This is a background operator
which allowing a large search space to be
explored and produces some random changes

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 in various chromosomes. Mutation points are
randomly selected in our implementations.
• Repair Function: After crossover and mutation
operations, the resulting chromosome may become
infeasible or outside the search space [26]. There are
three ways to deal with infeasible solutions [27]:
1) Remove infeasible timetables.
2) Apply a high penalty in the fitness function,
so that they are unlikely to survive.
3) Repair infeasible timetable.
Performing (1) and (2) are only accepted when a huge
proportion of the population is feasible. Several
researchers have applied repair process for rectifying
infeasible chromosomes that were generated during
evolution process [28], [29], [30], [31]. The GA in our
experiments has repair processes that ensure all
infeasible chromosomes are repaired. The repair
function of our algorithm is divided into four steps as
follows:
--- Step 1: Find free timeslots for each room, the input
matrix is Infeasible Course Timetable, called (ICT),
and the output of the pseudo code (see Figure 5) is
called (Free_Time_Room) matrix for each room.

Fig. 6. Repair function – Step (2) pseudo code

Fig. 7. Repair function – Step (3) pseudo code

Fig. 5. Repair function – Step (1) pseudo code

– Step 2: Find free timeslots for each event. The

input matrix is the Event Student, and the output of the
pseudo code (see Figure 6) is called (Free- Time
Event) matrix for each event.
– Step 3: Find feasible timeslots for rooms and events
without conflict. The input matrixes are Freetime
Room from Step (1) and FreeTime Event from Step
(2). The output of the pseudo code (see Figure 7) is a
Feasible Time matrix which satisfies all the hard Fig. 8. Repair function – Step (4) pseudo code
constraints for each event.

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 – Step 4: Repair ICT (Infeasible Course Timetable). local search on the small 4 and large datasets
The input is a Feasible Time matrix from Step (3), and respectively.
the output of the pseudo code (see Figure 8) is a
Feasible Course Timetable (FCT). TABLE I
PARAMETER SETTING FOR GENETIC ALGORITHMS
• Fitness Function: The algorithm assigns fitness value
Parameter Value
for each timetable. The fitness indicates how much Generation Number 10000
the timetable violates the soft constraints given in the Population size 100
definition of the timetable problem. The fitness Crossover Rate 0.8
function used is as follows: Mutation Rate 0.04
m Selection Mechanism Tournament selection
Min f (T ) = ∑∑ p j B j (t ) Crossover Type Single point

i =1 j∈C
The performance of our algorithm is quite promising
Where:
and reaches to stable state after several iterations, so
T: Given timetable.
we stop the algorithm if there is no improvement on
C: A set soft of constraints.
the timetable.
p: Penalty of violating soft constraint j.
B: A boolean function that returns 1 if tuple ti TABLE II
violates constraint j, otherwise return 0. COMPARISON BETWEEN VARIOUS VERSION METHODS AND OUR
METHOD
The proposed method must minimises the value of
this fitness function. So the lower f(T) values means Data Our Our Randomised VNS Graph
a better solution. Set Method Method Iterative With Tabu hyper-
Best Average Improvement list heuristi
Algorithm c
• Local Search: Before moving to the next (Best)
generation, we applied local search algorithm to s1 2 2.4 0 0 6
s2 4 4 0 0 7
improve the timetable. This process makes the s3 2 2.3 0 0 3
convergence of GA faster. We then reinsert the s4 0 2 0 0 3
result of the local search back to GA for the next s5 4 6.4 0 0 4
generation. m1 254 275.2 242 317 372
m2 258 268 161 313 419
m3 251 262.8 265 357 359
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS m4 321 353 181 247 348
m5 276 284.4 151 292 171
The proposed algorithm was programmed using l 1027 1032.2 - 100% inf 1068
Matlab and simulations were performed on the Intel
Pentium 4 2.33 GHz computer and tested on a standard
benchmark course timetable problem as presented in
SectionII. Table I shows the parameter for the genetic
algorithm chosen after some preliminary experiments,
and almost similar with the papers in the literature
[32], [30].
Our algorithm is capable to find a feasible timetable
for all eleven cases. We performed our method 5 times
for each case. Table II shows the results obtained and
the comparison with other approaches in the literature
such as a the Randomised Iterative Improvement
Algorithm by Abdullah et al. (2005), a graph
hyperheuristic by Burke et al. (2005) and the variable
neighbourhood search (VNS) by Abdullah et al.
(2005). From Table II, it is clear that the result of our
proposed algorithm produces acceptable timetables. Fig. 9. The convergence of GA and local search on the s4 dataset
We believe that modifying the parameters of GA and
local search can leads to better solution. In Figures 9
and 10, we show the best so far curves of the GAs and

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Fig. 10. The convergence of GA and local search on the large dataset
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper has introduced a genetic algorithm and local
search. A new repair function is also presented that is
totally able to change infeasible timetable to feasible
one. Future work will be aimed to enhance the local
search algorithm and applying more genetic operators
e.g., selection mechanism and crossover type, and
tested on real world course and examination
timetabling datasets.
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