International Journal of Computer Engineering & Applications, Vol. II, Issue I/III AN EXAMINATION SCHEDULING ALGORITHM USING GRAPH COLOURING – THE CASE OF SOKOINE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE Mohamed Abdallah Selemani 1 , Egbert Mujuni 2 , and Allen Mushi 3 1 Department of Mathematics, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania 2,3 Department of Mathematics, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania ABSTRACT: This paper presents a graph coloring based algorithm for Examinations Timetabling Problem at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania. A Recursive Largest First algorithm for graph coloring is applied to find timeslots. We present a summary of results which indicates good performance. Keywords: Examinations Timetabling, Combinatorial Optimization, Graph Coloring, Recursive Largest First, Heuristic Algorithms I. INTRODUCTION The University Examination Timetabling Problem has attracted significant research interest over the years. Basically, this is the problem of finding a schedule of a set of examinations within a given period of time while satisfying constraints over resources such as examination space and conflicts between examinations and rooms. These constraints are normally divided into hard and soft, where hard constraints must be satisfied for a feasible timetable, while soft constraints are desired to be satisfied as much as possible. Despite of four decades of research, no polynomial algorithm is known for the optimal solution of this problem within reasonable time. This problem is therefore known to be NP-hard as recorded by Burke et al [1], and El-Mohamed et al [2]. Owing to the importance of this problem, from both practical and theoretical point of view, numerous studies have been conducted including Abdullah, Burke and Mushi [4, 5]. The main difference between various studies is the set of assumptions and constraints which differs between applications. Due to the complexity of the problem, most of these studies concentrate on the heuristic algorithms which try to find an approximate solution. Some of 116