TY - GEN
T1 - Balanced student partitioning to promote effective learning: Applications in an international school
AU - Zhu, Wenbin
AU - Qin, Hu
AU - Lim, Andrew
AU - Xu, Zhou
PY - 2010/11/3
Y1 - 2010/11/3
N2 - In this paper, we describe a system that our team developed to solve the problem of heterogeneously partitioning students into classes for the Singapore International School based in Hong Kong. This problem has multiple objectives such as to achieve similar class sizes, similar gender ratios among all classes, each student having at least one old classmate of the same gender, conflict avoidance among students, and similarity of score distribution curves. We proved that this problem is extremely hard and provided an example to show that the number of feasible solutions is astronomical for only medium size cases. We devised and implemented a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to solve this problem. Our experimental results based on real application data indicate that our SA algorithm is able to improve the quality of the school's partitioning solutions and clearly meets all objectives set out by the client.
AB - In this paper, we describe a system that our team developed to solve the problem of heterogeneously partitioning students into classes for the Singapore International School based in Hong Kong. This problem has multiple objectives such as to achieve similar class sizes, similar gender ratios among all classes, each student having at least one old classmate of the same gender, conflict avoidance among students, and similarity of score distribution curves. We proved that this problem is extremely hard and provided an example to show that the number of feasible solutions is astronomical for only medium size cases. We devised and implemented a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to solve this problem. Our experimental results based on real application data indicate that our SA algorithm is able to improve the quality of the school's partitioning solutions and clearly meets all objectives set out by the client.
KW - multiple objective
KW - simulated annealing
KW - student partitioning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78049295174&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-15037-1_4
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-15037-1_4
M3 - Conference article published in proceeding or book
SN - 3642150365
SN - 9783642150364
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 38
EP - 48
BT - Knowledge Management and Acquisition for Smart Systems and Services - 11th International Workshop, PKAW 2010, Proceedings
T2 - 11th International Workshop on Knowledge Management and Acquisition for Smart Systems and Services, PKAW 2010
Y2 - 20 August 2010 through 3 September 2010
ER -