A student-based central exam scheduling model using A* algorithm

Abstract In this study, a student-based placement model using the A* algorithm is proposed and applied to solve the problem of placing the courses in exam sessions. The application area of the model is midterm and final exams, conducted by the Open Education Faculty. The reason for choosing open education exams for the practice is that the exams are applied across the country and more than 100,000 students participate. The main problem is to obtain a suitable distribution that can satisfy many constraints simultaneously. In the current system, the lessons in the sessions were placed once using the curriculum knowledge. This placement plan is applied in all exams. When the placement is done according to the curriculum information, the courses in the sessions cannot be placed effectively and efficiently due to a large number of common courses and the large number of students taking the exam. This makes the booklets more expensive and the organization more prone to errors. Both the opening of new programs and the increase in the number of students regularly lead to the necessity of placing the classes in sessions dynamically each semester. In addition, to prevent conflicts with the calendars of other central exams, it is necessary to conduct all exams in three sessions. A better solution was obtained by using a different model than the currently used model in the study. With this solution, distribution of the courses of successful students with few courses to all sessions is provided, and difficult courses of unsuccessful students who have a large number of courses were gathered in the same session. This study can support future studies on two issues: the first issue is the approach of using the course that will be taken by most students instead of the courses taught in most departments in the selection of the course to be placed in the booklet. The second issue is to try to find the most suitable solution by performing performance tests on many algorithms whose performance has been determined by many academic studies.