A Multi-agent Pattern Based Timetabling System

The “Academic Timetabling System” is a research project that has been funded by the deanship of scientific research of Tabuk University. The project aims at developing and implementing an academic time tabling system for Tabuk University that is based on MultiAgent technology. In this paper we introduce the “Academic Time Tabling System” that has been designed and implemented in Tabuk University. The introduced system has two research points: The first is the introduction of a new solution model for the time tabling problem that uses predefined class hours patterns according to the features and requirements of each scheduled course, and successively filters these possible patterns as the timetable is being built. The second is introducing the Multi-Agent technology as an alternative framework for solving timetabling problems. The proposed model has been implemented and applied on real environment at Tabuk University, and the results were satisfactory in terms of compactness and preferences satisfactionRegarding to the preferences satisfaction the results show that about 95 percent of courses are scheduled into the preference time periods proposed by the instructors, referring to the compactnessthe results shows that about 97 percent of the studying hours is scheduled without gaps.