A Constraint Programming Approach to Solving University Course Timetabling Problem (UCTP)

摘要

This paper presents the implementation of Constraint Programming in UCTP with special requirement based on the requirement given by Academic Service Divison of UMSLIC, with various forms of constraint which needed to be satisfied in order to obtain a feasible solution for the real-worldcourse timetabling problem obtained from the Universiti Malaysia Sabah Labuan International Campus (UMSLIC), Malaysia. The problem domains in UMSLIC have several constraints that need to be satisfied. Solutions are feasible if all the hard constraints are satisfied. This research does nottake into account the soft constraints involved in the domains. The Constraint Programming approach algorithm is tested over three real world datasets: testing dataset; semester 2 session 2014/2015 dataset; semester 1 session 2015/2016 dataset. The result shows that the algorithm studied inthis research is able to produce feasible solution within short period of time without violating any hard constraints, which is applicable towards the UCTP in UMSLIC.