Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

Religion and belief in Higher Education: the experiences of staff and students

This report presents key evidence from ‘Religion and belief in higher education: researching the experiences of staff and students’, a research project commissioned by ECU. The research methods used for this project took into consideration institutional contexts and backgrounds to religion or belief issues to ensure sensitivity to the issues involved. The project utilised the experience of the project stakeholder group in designing all research approaches.Equality Challenge Uni

Artificial Immune Algorithm for exams timetable

The Artificial Immune System is a novel optimization algorithm designed on the resilient behavior of the immune system of vertebrates. In this paper, this algorithm is used to solve the constrained optimization problem of creating a university exam schedule and assigning students and examiners to each of the sessions. Penalties are imposed on the violation of the constraints. Abolition of the penalties on the hard constraints in the first stage leads to feasible solutions. In the second stage, the algorithm further refines the search in obtaining optimal solutions, where the exam schedule matches the preferences of the examiners

Amersham and Wycombe College: report from the Inspectorate (FEFC inspection report; 63/96 and 106/00)

The Further Education Funding Council has a legal duty to make sure further education in England is properly assessed. The FEFC’s inspectorate inspects and reports on each college of further education according to a four-year cycle. This record comprises the reports for periods 1995-96 and 1999-2000

Newham College of Further Education: report from the Inspectorate (FEFC inspection report; 36/96 and 45/00)

The Further Education Funding Council has a legal duty to make sure further education in England is properly assessed. The FEFC’s inspectorate inspects and reports on each college of further education according to a four-year cycle. This record comprises the reports for periods 1995-96 and 1999-2000

Modelling Classroom Space Allocation at University of Rwanda-A Linear Programming Approach

Education and training play a key role as the human capital function. This is especially true for tertiary education. However, infrastructure and equipment limitations are some factors that limits levels of students\u27 enrollment in universities. This is moreso the case in developing countries where much of the infrastructure developments are donor-funded. For institutional managers and administrators, the allocating of the limited available classroom space is a constant problem that needs sophisticated approaches to deal with. Linear Optimization technique has shown promise in dealing with this problem. This research seeks to assess the Rwandan education system and highlight strides made to broaden access to tertiary education. Using data accessed from the College of Science and Technology for the 2019/2020 academic year, a linear programming model is formulated to assess the level of usage of the available classroom space at the College. The model is solved using the Dual Simplex algorithm via the Cplex solver implemented in AMPL. A solution analysis shows that, out of the 68 classrooms available on the Nyarugenge campus, only 18 with a seating capacity of 2,147 are being used to facilitate the learning of approximated 4,088 students, and that 50 classrooms with a seating capacity of 1,506 are being underutilized or not being used at all. Relevant recommendations including that the college explores the usage of virtual laboratory platforms to overcome space and material limitations associated with physical laboratories are presented

Course Time Table Scheduling for a Local College

This study dive into the field of course time table scheduling for a local institution. The subject of the study will be a local college in Malaysia, in particular on the SEGi College branch in Penang. This covers the development of the prototype software which will enable the simulation of the course time table for both the students and lecturers. The prototype software will be on a local search approach with reference to Hill Climbing with Random Walk algorithm and Best First Search algorithm. This research enables users to increase efficiency and performance in developing a course time table. Later,this research will be proposed for implementation to the management of SEGi College branch in Penang