An Integer Programming Model with Time-Based Preference

Course Assignment: An Integer Programming Model with Time-based Preference

Ayman Abd El Karim Mohammad Hazaymeh, Razamin Ramli*, Engku Muhammad Nazri Engku Abu Bakar, Ang Chooi Leng

College of Arts and Sciences, Universiti Utara Malaysia
06010 Sintok, Kedah
Email: [e-mail], {razamin, enazri, ang}@uum.edu.my

Abstract

Assigning of lecturers to courses is an important administrative task that must be performed in every academic department or faculty each semester. It is a difficult process due to the increasing number of students, and continuous increase in the number of courses offered. Furthermore, the lecturer-course assignment problem is now becoming more complicated and tedious since many lecturers’ preferences need to be satisfied as much as possible. One of the preference criteria is related to time of classes. In this paper, an Integer Programming (IP) model was designed and tested to solve the lecturer-course assignment problem at a faculty in Universiti Utara Malaysia. The IP model was developed to produce an equitable assignment of lecturers to courses based on time preference. Output and comparison of results are presented.

Keywords: lecturer-course assignment, lecturers ' preference, time preference and integer programming

*Author of correspondence

1. Introduction

Timetabling is always useful in any system that needs to be well organized, for example universities and schools. Different techniques can be used to solve scheduling and timetabling problems. Although these areas seem very similar and are inter-connected, scheduling and timetabling have slightly different meaning in different environments (Bartak and Rudova, 2001).

In general, scheduling problem is defined as the process that deals with the exact allocation of resources to activities over time, i.e. finding a resource that will process the activity and finding the time of processing )Brusoni et al., 1996(. On the other hand, a timetabling

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