A hybrid grouping genetic algorithm for assigning students to preferred laboratory groups

This paper presents a novel application of the hybrid grouping genetic algorithm in a problem related to university timetabling. Specifically, the assignment of students to laboratory groups is tackled. This problem includes an important constraint of capacity, due to laboratories usually have a maximum number of equips or computers available, so the number of total students in a group is constrained to be equal or less than the capacity of the laboratory. In addition, our approach considers the case in which the students provide a sorted list of preferred laboratory groups, so the objective of the assignment must take this point into account. A variation of the problem in which a balanced number of students per group is required (lecturer preferences) is also studied in this paper. The performance of the approach is shown in different test problems and in a real application in a Spanish University.