Solving the course scheduling problem using simulated annealing

Abstract

This paper tackles the NP-eomplete problem of academic class scheduling (or timetabling). The aim is to find a feasible timetable for the department of computer engineering in Izmir Institute of Technology. The approach focuses on simulated annealing. We compare the performance of various neighborhood searching algorithms based on so-called simple search, swapping, simple search-swapping and their combinations, taking into account the execution times and the final costs. The most satisfactory timetable is achieved with the combination of all these three algorithms. The results highlight the efficacy of the proposed scheme