Preferential Course Scheduling

An academic department of a college or university typically constructs its yearly schedule of classes in two stages. First, each faculty member is assigned a set of classes or course sections to teach during the year. Following that days, times, and room numbers are assigned to each course section. These two procedures are almost universally performed manually, demanding various degrees of combinatorial skill and political astuteness on the part of the course scheduler. Depending on the size of the department and the diversity of course offerings, the time required to construct such a schedule of classes can range from a perfunctory afternoon's work to an intensive month-long ordeal.

Recent work by Dyer and Mulvey [Dyer, James, John Mulvey. 1976. An integrated optimization/information systems for academic departmental planning. Management Science22 (12, August) 1332–1341; Dyer, James, John Mulvey. 1977. Computerized scheduling and planning. New Directions for Institutional Research13 (Spring) 67–86.] has addressed the problem of assigning faculty members to specific classes or course sections. They developed a network flow model that was successfully used to assign faculty members to course sections at the Graduate School of Management at UCLA.