Hybrid Cuckoo Search Approach for Course Time-Table Generation Problem

Abstract

Course time-table generation (CTTG) is a combinatorial optimization problem which largely fits into the family of scheduling problems. It attempts to schedule a number of subjects to particular time slots in an order to satisfy multiple numbers of constraints. A solution of CTTG generates a weekly schedule for each course satisfying several constraints regarding the order of classes, preference of teachers, and other institutional constraints. Automated generation of the course timetable is a problem of optimization that requires satisfying maximum constraints and can be solved with a search-based optimization technique. This article proposes a novel hybrid Cuckoo search approach for solving the Course Time-Table Generation (CTTG) problem for high schools affiliated to the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), India. The authors investigate the performance of local search Hill climbing against the population-based basic Cuckoo search algorithm on the problem. Thereafter they propose a hybrid Cuckoo search technique that improves the performance significantly showed by ANOVA.