Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Jordan as a Case Study

The course scheduling problem presents a major challenge for academic institutions as the number of students and thus the number of courses increase. The problem complexity is due to the large numberof constraints it must handle. These constraints include university policy with regards to the faculty teaching load, faculty preference to teaching specific courses, physical constraints on the class size based on the room size, and the availability of rooms at different time slots. This paper presents a solution for the course scheduling problem using a heuristic that models the problem as a supply-demand problem, where students form the demand side and the department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Jordan forms the supply side. The heuristic accounts for a wide set of constraints. . The heuristic was implemented to develop the course schedule using Excel Solver®. It was found that the model results provided a more systematic and flexible schedule than the manual ad-hoc technique used.