1. Can School Enrolment and Performance be Improved by Maximizing Students’ Sense of Choice in Elective Subjects?
- Author
-
Fiona Carroll, Rhydian Lewis, and Tom Anderson
- Subjects
Medical education ,Options Columns ,Student Choice ,Optimisation ,Graph Colouring ,021103 operations research ,Optimization algorithm ,Download ,Small number ,05 social sciences ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,Learning analytics ,050109 social psychology ,02 engineering and technology ,Personal autonomy ,Student choice ,Computer Science Applications ,Education ,Task (project management) ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Computational problem - Abstract
This paper explores a system that attempts to maximize high school students’ sense of choice when selecting elective subjects. We propose that individual schools can tailor the combinations of subjects they offer in order to maximize the number of prospective students who can study their preferred subjects, potentially increasing enrol- ment numbers and academic outcomes while also reducing administrative overheads. We analyze the underlying computational problem encountered in this task and describe a suitable AI-based optimization algorithm that we have made available for free download. We also discuss some outcomes of using this method on a small number of case study schools.
- Published
- 2020