A direct barter model for course add/drop process

Even though course timetabling and student scheduling problems have been studied extensively, not much has been done for the optimization of student add/drop requests after the initial registration period. Add/drop registrations are usually processed with a first come first served policy. This, howe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Discrete Applied Mathematics 2011-04, Vol.159 (8), p.812-825
Main Authors: HAYDAR OZER, Ali, ÖZTURAN, Can
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Add drop
Algorithmics. Computability. Computer arithmetics
Algorithms
Applied sciences
Barter network
Bartering
Calculus of variations and optimal control
Combinatorics
Combinatorics. Ordered structures
Computer science
control theory
systems
Computer systems performance. Reliability
Course scheduling
Exact sciences and technology
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Mathematics
Minimum cost
Network flow
Networks
Optimization
Policies
Scheduling
Sciences and techniques of general use
Software
Student registration
Students
Theoretical computing
Timetabling
Weighting
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Even though course timetabling and student scheduling problems have been studied extensively, not much has been done for the optimization of student add/drop requests after the initial registration period. Add/drop registrations are usually processed with a first come first served policy. This, however, can introduce inefficiencies and dead-locks resulting in add/drop requests that are not satisfied even though they can, in fact, be satisfied. We model the course add/drop process as a direct bartering problem in which add/drop requests appear as bids. We formulate the resulting problem as an integer linear program. We show that our problem can be solved polynomially as a minimum cost flow network problem. In our model, we also introduce a two-level weighting system that enables students to express priorities among their requests. We demonstrate improvement in the satisfaction of students over the currently used model and also the fast performance of our algorithms on various test cases based on real-life registration data of our university.
ISSN:0166-218X
1872-6771
DOI:10.1016/j.dam.2011.01.004