PREFERENCE DRIVEN UNIVERSITY COURSE SCHEDULING SYSTEM

University course planning and scheduling is the process of determining what courses to offer, how many sections are needed, determining the best term to offer each section, assigning a faculty member to instruct each section, and scheduling each section to a timeslot to avoid conflicts. The result of this task has an impact on every student and faculty member in the department. The process is typically broken down into three major phases: course offering planning, faculty assignment to planned course sections, and course scheduling into timeslots. This thesis looks at each of these phases for the Industrial and Manufacturing department and brings them together into a decision support and scheduling system. A decision support tool is created to facilitate planning of course offerings. Operations research is applied to assign sections to faculty members using a faculty preference driven integer linear programming model in order to minimize dissatisfaction in the department. Next, the faculty-section pairs are scheduled into university timeslots using a complex integer linear programming model. This scheduling model takes into consideration the faculty member time availability and preferences and general student time slot preferences as it minimizes dissatisfaction while avoiding conflicts among labs, faculty members and courses offered for each class level

Applying Data Mining to Scheduling Courses at a University

Scheduling courses ( timetabling ) at a University is a persistent challenge. Allocating course-sections to prescribed time slots for courses requires advanced quantitative techniques, such as goal programming, and collecting a large amount of multi-criteria data at least six to eight months in advance of a semester. This study takes an alternate approach. It demonstrates the feasibility of applying the principles of data mining. Specifically it uses association rules to evaluate a non-standard ( aberrant ) timetabling pilot study undertaken in one College at a University. The results indicate that 1), inductive methods are indeed applicable, 2), both summary and detailed results can be understood by key decision-makers, and 3), straightforward, repeatable SQL queries can be used as the chief analytical technique on a recurring basis. In addition, this study was one of the first empirical studies to provide an accurate measure of the discernable, but negligible, scheduling exclusionary effects that may impact course availability and diversity negatively

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

Μοντελοποίηση και επίλυση του προβλήματος κατάρτισης του ωρολόγιου προγράμματος του τμήματος Μ.Μ.Β. με μεθόδους ακέραιου προγραμματισμού σε διαδικτυακό γραφικό περιβάλλον

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία αποτελεί επέκταση της δουλειάς που έγινε από τον Βασίλειο Κουτρουμπίνα για τη βελτιστοποίηση του ωρολογίου προγράμματος του Τμήματος Μηχανολόγων Μηχανικών Βιομηχανίας. Υιοθετήσαμε το αρχικό μοντέλο ακεραίου προγραμματισμού και το εξελίξαμε ώστε να μπορεί να έχει πρακτική εφαρμογή για την κάλυψη των αναγκών του τμήματος, δίνοντας τα επιθυμητά αποτελέσματα σε λογικούς χρόνους. Επιπλέον, δημιουργήθηκε ένα αρχικό γραφικό interface για την εισαγωγή και εξαγωγή δεδομένων, όπως επίσης και για την επικαιροποίηση των σχετικών βάσεων δεδομένων. Έτσι, καταλήξαμε σε ένα ουσιαστικά λειτουργικό λογισμικό που με τις απαραίτητες ανθρώπινες παρεμβάσεις μπορεί να καταστρώσει ταχύτατα το ωρολόγιο πρόγραμμα διδασκαλίας του Τμήματος Μηχανολόγων Μηχανικών Βιομηχανίας