Addressing staffing challenges through improved planning: Demand-driven course schedule planning and instructor assignment in higher education

IF 6.7 1区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Decision Support Systems Pub Date : 2024-09-25 DOI:10.1016/j.dss.2024.114345

Guisen Xue, O. Felix Offodile, Rouzbeh Razavi, Dong-Heon Kwak, Jose Benitez

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper presents a novel decision support system (DSS) to address the University Course Timetabling Problem (UCTP). The solution decomposes the NP-complete UCTP into two sub-problems, allowing a structured approach to addressing the complexities inherent in the UCTP process. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to integrate academic year course schedule planning and instructor assignment, accommodating various constraints to meet student demands. The model optimizes the number of course sections and strategically schedules instructors, aiming to reduce the number of new and distinct courses assigned to them. Historical data from an academic department encompassing multiple disciplines, including Computer Information Systems, Business Management, and Business Analytics, at a large public university in the U.S. is used to develop the model, and the results are compared with the actual course schedule and instructor assignment. The results demonstrate that the proposed DSS would result in a 14 % reduction in the number of course sections offered, translating to approximately $130,000 in annual savings. Additionally, it could significantly reduce the number of new courses assigned to instructors by up to 81 % and the number of distinct course sections assigned to them by 29 %.

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通过改进规划应对人员配置挑战：高等教育中以需求为导向的课程表规划和教师分配

本文介绍了一种新型决策支持系统（DSS），用于解决大学课程时间安排问题（UCTP）。该解决方案将 NP 完备的 UCTP 分解为两个子问题，从而以结构化的方法解决 UCTP 过程中固有的复杂问题。我们提出了一个混合整数线性规划（MILP）模型，用于整合学年课程表规划和教师分配，同时考虑各种约束条件以满足学生需求。该模型优化了课程部分的数量，并对讲师进行了战略性安排，旨在减少分配给讲师的新课程和不同课程的数量。该模型的开发使用了美国一所大型公立大学一个包含多个学科（包括计算机信息系统、商业管理和商业分析）的学术部门的历史数据，并将结果与实际课程安排和讲师分配进行了比较。结果表明，拟议的教学支持系统将使所提供的课程节数减少 14%，每年可节省约 13 万美元。此外，该系统还可将分配给教师的新课程数量大幅减少 81%，将分配给教师的不同课节数量减少 29%。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Decision Support Systems 工程技术-计算机：人工智能

CiteScore

14.70

自引率

6.70%

发文量

119

审稿时长

13 months

期刊介绍： The common thread of articles published in Decision Support Systems is their relevance to theoretical and technical issues in the support of enhanced decision making. The areas addressed may include foundations, functionality, interfaces, implementation, impacts, and evaluation of decision support systems (DSSs).