Fairness in examination timetabling: Student preferences and extended formulations

Although they have been investigated for more than two decades, university examination timetabling problems are still considered challenging and interesting problems. In our study, we are investigating student preferences for the control of the time gaps between examinations; specifically, what students consider to be best for them and also fair between students. To support this, we conducted a survey of student views and there were two main findings. Firstly, students do have concerns about “fairness within a course”, that is, fairness between students within their own course as opposed to only between students in the entire university. Secondly, they do consider some examinations harder than others and would prefer a larger time gap before such hard examinations. To account for these student preferences, we intend to extend the formulation of examination timetabling problems by modifying the objective functions, and this paper briefly describes some options. Ultimately, the aim is to automatically produce fairer examination timetables, and to increase student satisfaction.