Thesis Defense: Course Scheduling with Preference Optimization

You are invited to Siddharth Dahiya's thesis defense.

Thesis Title: Course Scheduling with Preference Optimization

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Thang Bui

Abstract

The university course timetabling problem is a well-researched NP-Hard problem where the goal is to create a course timetable with a given number of professors, courses and time slots. There are certain constraints that need to be followed to ensure that professors are not over booked and that courses that may be scheduled by a student in the same semester, are not scheduled during overlapping time. A new perspective of preferences for courses and professors is presented and upon it a new problem is introduced called course scheduling with preference optimization. The focus of this problem is given sets of courses, professors, time slots, and preferences in terms of time of day for each professor and each course, a schedule is generated where maximum possible preferences are satisfied. To solve this problem, a hybrid genetic algorithm called Course Scheduling Algorithm is also presented. The course scheduling algorithm returns a schedule where the preferences for professor and courses are maximized as well as the difference between the number of credits that may be assigned to a professor and the number of credits actually assigned to a professor is kept to a minimum.

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 17th, 11:15 am
Location: Olmsted E310