A Hybrid Approach for University Course Timetabling

The university course timetabling problem deals with the assignment of lectures to specific timeslots and rooms. The goal is to satisfy the soft constraints to the largest degree possible while constructing a feasible schedule. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach consisting of three phases. During phase 1, initial solutions are generated using a constructive heuristic. An improvement approach is employed in phase 2 using a randomised iterative algorithm with a composite neighbourhood structure and a simulated annealing based acceptance criterion. In phase 3, a hill climbing approach is implemented in an attempt to further improve the solution. The approach is tested on eleven established datasets. The results demonstrate that the hybrid approach is able to produce solutions that are competitive with state-of-the-art techniques from the literature.