The optimal exam experience: a timetabling approach to prevent student cheating and fatigue

The optimal exam experience: a timetabling approach to prevent student cheating and fatigue

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Article ID: iaor201525618
Volume: 21
Issue: 3
Start Page Number: 263
End Page Number: 278
Publication Date: Oct 2014
Journal: International Journal of Operational Research
Authors: , ,
Keywords: education, optimization, programming: integer, combinatorial optimization
Abstract:

University exam planning is a notoriously difficult endeavour that involves satisfying numerous classroom capacity and conflict‐prevention constraints. Accordingly, exam timetabling has received much attention in the literature over the years. Despite research advances, student cheating and fatigue continue to persist and are typically addressed separately from timetabling considerations. In this paper, we show how both problems can be addressed effectively by incorporating such considerations into the timetabling. We address a real problem occurring at the Turkish Air Force Academy (TUAFA) and develop two versions of an integer programming model. The first finds a feasible timetable while respecting cheating and fatigue‐prevention constraints. The second maximises classroom utilisation, decreasing both the number of classrooms and proctors required. Computational experiments using TUAFA data show that both models are tractable in practice and that by incorporating the objective function, classroom utilisation can be increased by 55% leading to a 43% reduction in required classrooms.

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