A decision support system for the faculty/course assignment problem

This thesis presents a methodology for determining faculty/course assignments based on preferences for the goals faculty members feel are important and seek to attain in selecting the courses they would like to teach. The heuristic procedure seeks to maximize faculty goal and preference attainments for the courses.

Several operations research techniques have been used to solve this problem, but the limitations of the techniques minimize their usefulness. A discussion of these techniques and their sources of information are given.

The assignment model uses faculty preferences for courses based on course-specific goals, faculty availability, and maximum teaching load as constraining factors.

The model was implemented using three Advanced BASIC programs with interactive capability. The model was tested in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Virginia Tech. System analysis was performed utilizing pre-test measures of satisfaction with the teaching assignments determined by the current scheduling system and post-test measures of satisfaction with the teaching assignments determined by the proposed scheduling system. An analysis of the results is included.