Improved satisfaction of university faculty by utilizing the Bat metaheuristic algo- rithm (Case study of the faculty of humanities, Islamic Azad University, Parand Branch)

Scheduling is a vital part of daily life that has been the focus of attention since the 1950s. Knowledge of scheduling is a very important and applicable category in industrial engineering and planning of human life. In the field of education, scheduling, and timetabling for best results in classroom teaching is one of the most challenging issues in university programming. As each university has its own rules, policies, resources, and restrictions a unique model of scheduling and timetabling cannot implement. This can cause more complexity and challenging point which needs to be considered scientifically. This study presents a sound scientific model of timetabling and classroom scheduling to improve faculties’ desirability based on days, times, and contents preferences. A sample in Parand branch of Islamic Azad university chooses using the Bat metaheuristic algorithm. By consid- ering the limitations, some unchangeable constraints regarding the specific rules and minimal linear delimitation of the soft constraints of the model, using the appropriate meta-heuristic algorithm to reduce the model run time to a minimum. The results show that the algorithm achieves better results in many test data compared to other algorithms due to meeting many limitations in the problem coding structure. The Bat algorithm is compared with four other algorithms while comparing the results of solving the proposed mathematical model with five metaheuristic algorithms to evaluate the performance. In this research, a multi- objective model is presented to maximize the desirability of professors and to solve the model using Bat, Cuckoo Search, Artificial bee colony, firefly, and Genetic algorithms. In this research 40 different runs of each algorithm were compared, and conclusions were drawn. Modeling has been solved with GAMS and MATLAB software and using the bat meta-heuristic algorithm. It is concluded that in this model, the bat algorithm is the most appropriate algorithm with the shortest time, which has caused the satisfaction of the professors of the educational departments of this academy.