Optimizing Student Learning: A Faculty-Course Assignment Problem Using Linear Programming

Abstract

Decision making is carried out in organizations in such a way as to observe the goals of the organizations, which are a combination of the goals of the individuals and groups within the organization. This study deals with some of the objectives of the universities as well as the faculty themselves in the process of assigning faculty members to teach specific sections of particular courses each semester. The regular faculty of the Department of Business and Management were used as the representative set of such objectives. Some conflict between objectives which are used as constraints in the analysis were noted. The assignment process required satisfying in such a way that the total evaluation rating is maximized; thus, a faculty member who has the highest competency to teach such a specific subject over the others is assigned. A mathematical model of the assignment process was formulated using mixed-integer programming. The test run was successfully analyzed using the solver add-in in MS excel which generated an overall evaluation rating of 2188% which has an equivalent average evaluation rating of 87.5% for each faculty assigned. The faculty assignment problem is only one of the many day-to-day situations in real life which can be viewed as allocations of scarce resources involving separate units.