A tabu search algorithm to schedule university examinations
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Autores: Ramón Álvarez Valdés
, Enric Crespo Escobar , Josep María Tamarit
- Localización: Questiió: Quaderns d'Estadística, Sistemes, Informatica i Investigació Operativa, ISSN 0210-8054, Vol. 21, Nº. 1-2, 1997, págs. 201-215
- Idioma: inglés
- Títulos paralelos:
- Algoritmo de búsqueda tabú para programar los exámenes universitarios
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Scheduling examinations in a large university is an increasingly complex problem, due to its size, the growing flexibility of students' curricula and the interest in including a wide set of objectives and constraints. In this paper we present a new algorithm for this problem and its application to a university in Spain.
A combination of heuristics, based on Tabu Search, first finds a solution in which no student has two exams simultaneously and then improves it by evenly spacing the exams in the examination period. The algorithm has been imbedded into a package to be used by Faculty administrators and proposes solutions to be considered by the parties involved: administration, departments and students. Computational results, comparing our results with the timetables actually used, are presented
