A university administration system to automatically assign courses to teachers and support the design of timetables through mathematical modeling and restrictions analysis

Abstract

One of the most complex tasks that commonly must be accomplished each school year/semester by careers directors is the courses assignment and classes schedule design, given that this task requires addressing several restrictions related to the availability of classrooms and educational resources as well as the flexibility of teachers daily schedule (personal and professional spheres). This situation becomes more complicated in developing countries due to the lack of different kind of resources such as physical spaces, informatics support tools, enough time to perform planning activities, etc. For these reasons, in this paper, we present a system that automatically generates courses assignments as well as supports the design of class schedules. Our proposal is based on mathematical modeling and data mining techniques and is focused on engineering careers (due to additional restrictions required for laboratory use and practices). Currently, our system was put to test with 133.000 registers of teachers and schedules of an Ecuadorian university and the results are encouraging.