Meta Heuristic Algorithm: An Optimal Solution for Examination Resources Scheduling

Information Technology had turn to a very significant tool in order to ease our daily activities and higher education has become much more complex due to the rise in student enrolment and the implementation of modularity in many institutions. This has put additional strain on administrators to find solutions, frequently without the use of computers. A successful distribution of examination venue, seats, and effective allocation of invigilators and attendants is one of the primary concerns of examination committee in any institution of learning. The main problems faced by the educational institution include allocating the proper examination venue for a class, having some seats empty and in some cases the number of students greater than the available capacity of the venue and finally students may decide to go to venue he/she wishes which eventually causes some venue overcrowded while some are underutilized. The examination resource schedulling was developed using Php, Mysql while WAMP was used for the implementation of the system and an optimisation technique called meta heuristic algorithm is employed to locate the optimal answer inside a specified search space, it focus on making incremental changes to improve a current solution until they reach a locally optimal or satisfactory solution. The evaluation of the system was carried using Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) among the players (users), the internal and external rating of the software by the students are 99.20% and 98.67% while rating by the staff are 98.50% and 98.13%. Finally, the study concludes that the system can easily be adopted by any higher school of learning with little or no amendments.