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Modified and hybridised bi-objective firefly algorithms for university course scheduling

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Abstract

Academic institutions may be edging towards a global uncertainty, recession, and a string of financial difficulties. An effective course timetabling is one of managerial strategies to optimise the operating costs and resource utilisation. This paper presents the first application of firefly algorithm (FA) and its modifications and hybridisations for solving real-world course timetabling problem. A novel bi-objective firefly algorithm (BOFA) with Pareto dominance approach was developed for optimising the operating costs and resource utilisation. Random key technique was applied for adapting the continuous firefly movement to solve discrete timetabling problem. Five constructive heuristics were additionally embedded into the BOFA for initialising feasible timetables. Computational experiments were sequentially conducted using eleven problem instances obtained from a collaborating university. It was found that the proposed hybridisation outperformed particle swarm optimisation, the classical FA, and modified FA (MFA), in terms of the quality of the timetables obtained, computational times and convergent speed. The proposed hybrid bi-objective FA (HBOFA) yielded better Pareto frontiers than the conventional BOFA with less computational times for all problem instances.

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Funding

This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation under the grant number RGNS 63–204 and the cofounding of the National Research Council of Thailand and Naresuan University under the grant number N42A650329.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Industrial Technology, Pibulsongkram Rajabhat University, Phitsanulok, 65000, Thailand

    Thatchai Thepphakorn

  2. Director of the Centre of Operations Research and Industrial Applications (CORIA), Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, 65000, Thailand

    Pupong Pongcharoen

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  1. Thatchai Thepphakorn
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Thatchai Thepphakorn contributed to methodology, data curation, software, validation, writing-original draft, and funding acquisition. Pupong Pongcharoen contributed to conceptualisation, investigation, supervision, funding acquisition, writing-review and editing.

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Correspondence to Pupong Pongcharoen.

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Thepphakorn, T., Pongcharoen, P. Modified and hybridised bi-objective firefly algorithms for university course scheduling. Soft Comput 27, 9735–9772 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-022-07810-5

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