Fairness in examination timetabling: student preferences and extended formulations

Variations of the examination timetabling problem have been investigated by the research community for more than two decades. The common characteristic between all problems is the fact that the definitions and data sets used all originate from actual educational institutions, particularly universities, including specific examination criteria and the students involved. Although much has been achieved and published on the state-of-the-art problem modelling and optimisation, a lack of attention has been focussed on the students involved in the process. This work presents and utilises the results of an extensive survey seeking student preferences with regard to their individual examination timetables, with the aim of producing solutions which satisfy these preferences while still also satisfying all existing benchmark considerations. The study reveals one of the main concerns relates to fairness within the students cohort; i.e. a student considers fairness with respect to the examination timetables of their immediate peers, as highly important. Considerations such as providing an equitable distribution of preparation time between all student cohort examinations, not just a majority, are used to form a measure of fairness. In order to satisfy this requirement, we propose an extension to the state-of-the-art examination timetabling problem models widely used in the scientific literature. Fairness is introduced as a new objective in addition to the standard objectives, creating a multi-objective problem. Several real-world examination data models are extended and the benchmarks for each are used in experimentation to determine the effectiveness of a multi-stage multi-objective approach based on weighted Tchebyceff scalarisation in improving fairness along with the other objectives. The results show that the proposed model and methods allow for the production of high quality timetable solutions while also providing a trade-off between the standard soft constraints and a desired fairness for each student

Satisfiers and dissatisfiers for international vocational education students: A case study using narrative frames

While the satisfaction of international students is frequently surveyed, much of this research is based on a very limited range of closed-item data collection methods, producing findings that partially reflect the researchers’ assumptions in designing the survey items. Recognizing the potential value in using methods that are more open-ended and qualitative analyses, the present study employed narrative frames and follow-up interviews to explore the satisfiers and dissatisfiers for international vocational education students at one institution in New Zealand. Reporting on perceptions of the class, institution, and community, the findings identify the participants’ top-of-mind (dis)satisfiers and complement the existing literature by identifying seldom-reported themes. Discussion of issues in analyzing narrative frames is also provided

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

Optimizing a Law School’s Course Schedule

[Excerpt] “Just like other educational institutions, law schools must schedule courses by taking into consideration student needs, faculty resources, and logistical support such as classroom size and equipment needs. Course scheduling is an administrative function, typically handled by an Assistant Dean or an Associate Dean, who works with the faculty and the registrar to balance these considerations in advance of the registration process. Usually, the entire academic year is scheduled in advance, although the spring semester may be labeled tentative until registration begins for that semester. It’s hard to imagine, but some schools even publish a two-year schedule of upper-division courses so that students can plan their entire law school career in advance. In order to give assistance to those academics involved for the first time in the scheduling process, this article discusses the law school scheduling process and how a scheduling software package has worked to successfully automate what has been seen as one of the most abysmal administrative tasks of an Associate Dean. We first provide a background to course scheduling at a typical law school. We then present a review of the tools for, and literature on, course scheduling, followed by a discussion of how technology can be applied to course scheduling in general, and our outcomes of applying this technology in a law school environment. We close with a brief summary.