Educational Schedule Development Using Evolution Technologies

Abstract

An effective and optimal schedule is one of the keys to obtaining the necessary knowledge and skills by students, as well as creating comfortable conditions for teachers to work. However, in most universities, schedules are still being developed manually, which takes a long time, and always has a certain percentage of subjectivity. This is due to the relevant software inability to take into account the preferences and requirements of students and teachers and to give them the priorities as a human expert can do. The proposed method makes it possible, by conducting surveys among students and faculty members, to determine and take into account their requirements, to evaluate the possibility of fulfilling their desires and to prioritize them, depending on various factors such as material provision, the number of students with certain proposals for the schedule, teacher's position and status, and others. Using evolutionary technologies allows to quickly conduct an analysis that makes possible to perform multiply experiments, changing certain parameters, and choose the best option. The automation of this process guarantees taking into account all the restrictions and desires that a human expert can not handle with when dealing with a large number of students and teachers. This removes the influence of subjectivity. The proposed method was tested on real data, its efficiency and advantages are shown in the paper.