Distributed Scatter Search for the Examination Timetabling Problem

Examination Timetabling for Universities is a problem with significant practical importance. It belongs to the general class of educational timetabling problems and has been exposed to numerous approaches for solving it. We propose a parallel/distributed solution which is based on the metaheuristic method Scatter Search combined with Path Relinking in an attempt to diversify the search procedure by producing promising new timetables. Our approach improves on the best publicly available results for the datasets of ITC2007 (International Timetabling Competition 2007-2008). The constraint of limited execution time that was imposed by ITC2007 was disregarded in an effort to pursue the best values our approach could reach. We consider this specific examination timetabling problem as a “test bed” for timetabling problems in general and we expect to provide insight for developing effective solution processes for other practical scheduling problems.

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