Management and Optimal Distribution of Large Student Numbers

Timetabling problems appear at every university. The degree of difficulty increases with an increasing number of students and courses for which the scheduling shall be carried out. From the mathematical point of view this is a “hard” problem, since the runtime on a computer cannot be estimated by a simple law (i.e. by a polynomial law) in the number of parameters. These kinds of problems are called “NP hard”. There are different aspects of the timetabling problem at universities and all specified problems are important for room management at universities, for the realization of courses that can be studied according to curricula, and for the satisfaction of students and teachers. These problems are related to the optimization of room management and personnel costs (e.g. by a uniform distribution of students). Thus, the solution of these problems is related to the optimization of “real” costs, a more and more important economic factor at (German) universities. Since 2003 for the solution of the post enrollment based course timetabling problem at the Technische Universität Berlin we are using an algorithm that has been realized by members of our team.Moreover, administration of homework and exams needs to be done. Thus, the Moses (Mobile Services for Students)-Account is being developed and used since 2004. This web-based software allows students to enroll in tutorials, with a list of preferences for given dates. A special algorithm, providing a globally optimized solution, processes all registrations.