Modeling and solving Course Timetabling Problem in order to maximize the efficiency of hard and soft constraints

The problem of course timetabling problem deals with the creation of a timetable, the purpose of which is to assign courses to different time periods in the week and to determine an arrangement of courses that is acceptable and feasible for teachers, students, and higher education institutions while complying with the educational regulations. In this work, we attempted to consider a scheduling problem in which the compactness of the curriculum, the distribution of the course schedule in the time frame, the preferences of the professors, the minimum number of working days, the maximum capacity, and the sustainability of the classes (with the goal of minimizing the daily commute of students between classes) should be considered. To model the problem, we considered a mathematical programming problem of nonlinear integer type with large dimensions. The solution of the mathematical model with using the software GAMS and the results of course planning for the second semester of the master's program in applied mathematics at Iran University of Science and Technology are reported at the end.