Automated University Timetabling: The State of the Art

Scheduling lectures or exams for universities is a large and complex task. There are many different departments and faculties, each with their own ideas about how and when their courses should be run. Furthermore, modularisation means that students can take courses from a combination of several departments, possibly even in different faculties. Numerous university timetabling systems have been devised, and work is underway to create a standard which will enable objective performance comparisons. This paper briefly looks at various popular techniques and recent work on both exam and course scheduling around the world, and should serve as an introduction to the field.