Seeking an optimal solution for a balanced academic curriculum by metaheuristics and functional programming

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to present and exemplify a computational solution to minimize the cost of designing curriculum plans by using bio-inspired algorithms to automate and reduce errors. The study focuses on solving the balanced academic curriculum problem (BACP) through metaheuristic optimization, based on the behavior or algorithm of fireflies and based on the use of functional programming in the Haskell language. The firefly algorithm is applied to a set of test instances to demonstrate its effectiveness. The results show that by applying the proposed solution function to optimize load balance in curricular meshes of eight, 10, and 12 semesters, the performance is oscillating when considering 50 runs. But, it permits obtaining expected values for the minimum academic load in each case. It is concluded that the proposal presented here allows generating efficient solutions for designing balanced curricular meshes.