University Course Timetabling Using Graph-based Hyper Heuristics

University course timetabling is a complex optimization problem. There are many components like departments، faculties، rooms، and students making the problem huge and difficult to solve. Each component enforces a set of normally conflicting constraints on the solution space. The problem will be solved if courses are scheduled in different rooms and within some specific time slots such that a set of constraints are satisfied. In this paper، a graph-based hyper-heuristic is proposed to find a solution to the problem. This is a two tiers modeling approach combining hyper heuristic with graph coloring technique. The upper tier heuristic is used to select a suitable heuristic to find a feasible solution on the lower tier. To find the suitability of the proposed approach، it has been applied to a real world case. The proposed approach was able to satisfy all the hard and soft constraints. Based on the research findings، it can be concluded that a graph-based hyper heuristic approach is a suitable and computationally efficient method to find a solution to university course timetabling problem.