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 interexamination gaps (termed paper spread) of each student should be maximized. The results compare favorably against the actual timetable produced by the current manual system