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Developing an Online Examination Timetabling System Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm in Higher Education

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Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems (BROADNETS 2021)

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Abstract

Educational timetabling is a fundamental problem impacting schools and universities’ effective operation in many aspects. Different priorities for constraints in different educational institutions result in the scarcity of universal approaches to the problems. Recently, COVID-19 crisis causes the transformation of traditional classroom teaching protocols, which challenge traditional educational timetabling. Especially for examination timetabling problems, as the major hard constraints change, such as unlimited room capacity, non-invigilator and diverse exam durations, the problem circumstance varies. Based on a scenario of a local university, this research proposes a conceptual model of the online examination timetabling problem and presents a conflict table for constraint handling. A modified Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is applied to the proposed model. The proposed approach is simulated with a real case containing 16,246 exam items covering 9,366 students and 209 courses. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach can satisfy every hard constraint and minimise the soft constraint violation. Compared to the traditional constraint programming method, the proposed approach is more effective and can provide more balanced solutions for the online examination timetabling problems.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge CQUniversity to give permission to use the de-identified student enrolment data for the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD, 4702, Australia

    Kaixiang Zhu, Lily D. Li & Michael Li

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  1. Kaixiang Zhu
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  2. Lily D. Li
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Correspondence to Kaixiang Zhu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia

    Wei Xiang

  2. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Fengling Han

  3. La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Tran Khoa Phan

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Zhu, K., Li, L.D., Li, M. (2022). Developing an Online Examination Timetabling System Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm in Higher Education. In: Xiang, W., Han, F., Phan, T.K. (eds) Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems. BROADNETS 2021. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 413. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93479-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93479-8_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-93478-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-93479-8

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