A General Mathematical Model for University Courses Timetabling: Implementation to a Public University in Malaysia

Abstract

University course timetabling is a well-known management problem amongst researchers, thus the rich body of literature. However, published articles are mainly on improved solution approaches leads to presentation on different constraints used and ignoring human preferences. This however, limits the model application to other universities. The research aims to bridge the gap by acknowledging these varieties of demands. In the process of generating our mathematical model, we have gone through meticulously researches that have been carried out in the past years to determine the demands of individuals involved directly with the timetable. The varieties of demands were clarified from a survey conducted. An improvised UCTP model was developed, which involves a superset of constraints that also includes the users’ preferences. However, we will extensively discuss on the list of requirements obtained from the survey and demonstrate the requirements that were found acceptable to be considered in a general mathematical model. To verify the compatibility of our mathematical model, we illustrate with real data from a university in Malaysia. The experimental result confirms the applicability of our mathematical model towards real problem. We expect that this model could be in favor of solving other university course timetabling problem with slight modifications.