Heuristics for the exam scheduling problem

As part of the process of creating a campus-wide timetabling system for the National University of Singapore, the authors investigated examination scheduling algorithms. The challenge in exam scheduling is to draw up the final examination timetable, taking into account a number of different constraints. The authors propose a different approach when the inter-examination gaps (termed paper spread) of each student should be maximized. The results compare favorably against the actual timetable produced by the current manual system.