Proposing a Two-Phase Integer Linear Programming for University-Course Timetabling

Abstract

An integer linear programming model for university courses timetabling is proposed here. In order to reduce the number of decisive variables, a combination of a course, a professor schedule and the students ‘group was defined as an activity. In this context, the two integer programming models namely the activity-based model and a two-phase activity-based model were proposed. In the first model, all activities were scheduled based on the number of required weekly sessions in the weekdays intervals; however, in the second model, classes and training courses were determined according to the planned sessions considering their special restrictions. These models were formulated based on the process of assigning the university courses within specific intervals throughout the week considering fierce constraints for a given semester in the department of Economics at University of Isfahan. All regulation concerning the courses timetable of a semester were formulated in GAMS software. Then, 239 courses were successfully scheduled using the two-phase activity-based model in only 9 minutes and 16 seconds

Keywords

• Bi-level model
• Hard constraint
• Integer linear programming
• Mathematical modeling
• University course timetabling