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Real-life curriculum-based timetabling with elective courses and course sections

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Abstract

This paper presents an innovative approach to curriculum-based timetabling. To capture complex relations of real life curriculum-based timetabling problems, curricula are defined by a rich model that includes optional courses and course groups among which students are expected to take a subset of courses. In addition, courses may contain alternative course sections. A transformation between the proposed curriculum model and student course enrollments is formalized and a local search algorithm generating corresponding enrollments is introduced. While the proposed curriculum model is too complicated for existing curriculum-based solvers, the transformation enables curriculum-based timetabling in any existing enrollment-based course timetabling solver. The approach was implemented in a well established enrollment-based course timetabling system UniTime. The system has been successfully applied in practice at the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University for about 7,500 students and 260 curricula and at the Faculty of Sports Studies at Masaryk University for about 1,400 students and 25 curricula. Experimental results related with these problems are demonstrated for two semesters.

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Notes

  1. http://www.unitime.org.

  2. This is typical for the vast majority of students in our case. Only students wanting to study two different student programs would not satisfy this condition.

  3. http://is.muni.cz/rozvrh/?fakulta=1441&lang=en.

  4. http://is.muni.cz/rozvrh/?fakulta=1451&lang=en.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Keith Murray for careful proofreading of this paper and for his valuable comments. This work is supported by the Grant Agency of Czech Republic under the contract P202\(/\)12\(/\)0306. The access to the MetaCentrum computing facilities provided under the program “Projects of Large Infrastructure for Research, Development, and Innovations” LM2010005 funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic is highly appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Space Management and Academic Scheduling, Purdue University, 501 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Tomáš Müller

  2. Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Botanická 68a, Brno, Czech Republic

    Hana Rudová

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  1. Tomáš Müller
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  2. Hana Rudová
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Correspondence to Tomáš Müller.

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Müller, T., Rudová, H. Real-life curriculum-based timetabling with elective courses and course sections. Ann Oper Res 239, 153–170 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-014-1643-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-014-1643-1

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