University Timetabling: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice

As an academic in the School of Computer Science at Queen's University, a visiting researcher to the Automated Scheduling, Opimisation and Planning (ASAP) group within the School of Computer Science and IT at the University of Nottingham and Managing Director of eventMAP Limited, a university technological spin out company, the auth or is in a unique position to provide comments on both the practice and theory of timetabling (automated and otherwise) within the university sector. The s tudy of the relationship and interaction between the work carried out in the aca demic literature and the requirements of university administrators is essent ial if ideas generated by research are to benefit every day users. Conversely, it is crucial the needs of the timetabling community influence the direction taken by research if high quality practical solutions are to be produced. A main obje ctive of the work presented here is to provide up-to-date information which wil l enable researchers to further investigate the area of timetabling resear ch in relation to the generation of robust and flexible techniques which can cope wi th complexities experienced during implementation in 'real world' scenarios. F urthermore, although not discussed here in detail, it is essential, from a c ommercial perspective, that these developed leading edge techniques are incorpo rated and used within general applicable timetabling tools. The aim of t his paper is to motivate the discussion required to bridge this timetabling gap by bringing timetabling research and educational requirements closer togeth er.

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