Application of the course scheduling problems based on 0-1 integer programming

Timetabling problems in educational institutions concern with assigning resources such as lectures, lecturers, classrooms and exams to suitable time periods in the weekly course schedule with predefined constraints. In spite of the convenience of recent techonology, in most of the educational institutions the schedules are still generated manually based on the old adjustments and the system. Schedules generated by this rule, adversely affects the education process and the desirable productivity cannot be obtained. In this research, the course timetabling problem has been discussed and for a real case an integer programming model is developed to assign courses to the suitable time periods in a weekly schedule. Firstly the model was generated by the data of the real case and it was solved in different dimensions. While solving the problem with different dimensions the appropriate solutions were achieved in desirable amount of time. Then the model was developed by the new additional objective function and the constraints based on a new scenario, appropriate solutions were again achieved in desirable amount of time.Finally, solutions of the developed model for the new scenario and the real case model were compared and it is determined that the more flexible course schedules were obtained from the developed model for the new scenario.Key Words: Course, scheduling, integer programming