Implementing a Class-Scheduling System at the College of Business and Economics of Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia

The College of Business and Economics at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia has had phenomenal growth during the past 10 years. This aligns with Ethiopia’s aggressive higher education expansion policy. With this growth, however, came complex operational planning problems of which class scheduling is one. The college has customarily solved its class-scheduling problem using a manual approach; however, as it expanded, the manual approach became overly cumbersome and inaccurate. Several schedule revisions were necessary before usable schedules were found. As a result, many courses started late, and some course topics were not covered adequately. To address this situation, we developed a sequential linear integer programming approach to scheduling classes. Using this approach, we generated complete and conflict-free schedules and reduced the time required to construct schedules from one week to less than an hour. We also improved the percentage of morning classes from 50 to 60 percent and significantly reduced room switching. The teaching loads generated achieve a more balanced distribution for instructors, and lectures are spread more evenly across the weekdays per section. We used the system to construct official schedules for the college’s first and second semesters of its 2013–2014 academic year.