Abstract:

In education, exam timetable is crucial but difficult to be done manually due to the complexity of the problems caused by some reasons such as dual academic calendar, increasing student enrolments, invigilator constraints, limitations of resources, etc. Lecturers or examiner often complain of overload in marking due to number of students and duration given for marking exam papers is not enough. This study presents a solution method intended for reducing exam duration in Centre for Foundation Studies and Extension Education (FOSEE), Multimedia University (MMU), Malaysia. The method of solution is using heuristic approaches that include graph colouring, clustering and sequential heuristic. The discussions were focused on invigilator or examiner constraints and the approach is tested on real-world exam timetabling problems.