Research Article Open Access

Exploring a Flexible Scoring Scheme for a Heuristic Search Technique: A Case Study of University Timetables

Sangsuree Vasupongayya1, Warakorn Sitthirit1, Suthon Sae-Wong1 and Thaniya Kaosol1
  • 1 Prince of Songkla University, Thailand

Abstract

The university course timetabling management system is proposed in this work. The proposed system applies depth-bounded discrepancy search together with the heuristic and the hard-soft constraints to guide the search to a good solution space. To make the proposed system easy to use by a non-technical user, this work explores a scoring scheme including the effects of the ordering heuristics, the effects of the objective model and the effects of the workload characteristics in order to pre-define a set of configurations and to automatically adapt to the changes in the workload. The experimental results show that the proposed system can find a suitable solution for various workloads. The feedback from the potential users on the proposed system is positive.

Journal of Computer Science
Volume 16 No. 5, 2020, 660-670

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/jcssp.2020.660.670

Submitted On: 13 October 2019 Published On: 2 June 2020

How to Cite: Vasupongayya, S., Sitthirit, W., Sae-Wong, S. & Kaosol, T. (2020). Exploring a Flexible Scoring Scheme for a Heuristic Search Technique: A Case Study of University Timetables. Journal of Computer Science, 16(5), 660-670. https://doi.org/10.3844/jcssp.2020.660.670

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Keywords

  • Depth-Bounded Discrepancy Search
  • Constraints
  • Objective Model
  • Timetable