Solving the curriculum scheduling problem with genetic algorithm: An application

Scheduling problems are the assignment of a certain activity to a limited amount of time intervals, ensuring that its constraints are met as much as possible. For educational institutions, this problem is used in organizing and implementing course and exam procedures. Programs made manually take a very long time and problems occur. In fact, in some cases, it becomes impossible to create even just one suitable chart. There is no single solution to the course scheduling problem, which is solved using various methods. Various practices have been used due to differences from institution to institution, city to city, and country to country. Exact methods and heuristic methods are mainly used in the solution methods of course scheduling problems, which are an extension of timetabling problems. Both methods have their own subclasses. All of these subclasses respond to course and exam scheduling problems, but the essential thing in scheduling problems is to clearly and accurately determine the constraints and objective function of the problem and solve the problem in the shortest time. At this point, it is up to the researcher to choose which algorithm to use. In this study, a solution to the curriculum scheduling problem under the title of educational scheduling problems was sought with a Genetic Algorithm. By referring to previous studies, it is aimed to create a curriculum for hybrid/rotating classes, which is a new and current problem. A mathematical model of the problem with determined constraints was created for Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Business Administration and was solved with the Genetic Algorithm on MATLAB. A solution that satisfies all constraints has been found.