Case—Kelly’s Class Scheduling

Abstract

Kelly is a senior majoring in finance at Smith University with one more semester left to go. After a graduation audit, she was told she has five more courses she needs to take: Business Strategy (MGT 490), International Finance (FIN 358), one service-learning course, and any two finance elective courses. A servicelearning course is a requirement at the university that has a community service component. Many of the service-learning courses are offered by the Computer Information Systems Department, and Kelly would like to take one of those. In particular, two courses she finds interesting are Intergenerational Computing (CIS 102T), which involves teaching senior citizens how to use the computer, and Web Design for Nonprofit Organizations (CIS 102W). After looking at the finance course offerings, she noticed four potential finance elective courses: Data Analysis in Finance (FIN 325); Risk Management (FIN 352); Options, Futures, and Swaps (FIN 356); and Fixed Instruments and Markets (FIN 359). Kelly would like to avoid morning classes because her internship requires her to work a few hours most weekday mornings. As she makes up her schedule, Kelly would like to keep in mind her priorities. Her priorities are first, the content of the course, second, the reputation of the instructor, and third, the timing of the course. She decided she will assign a rating between 1 and 5 to each course section under consideration. From the online class schedule, she has made a list of course sections offered, as shown in Table 1. All of the courses have at least two sections. Some sections meet once a week for three hours, and some meet twice a week alternating between one-hour and two-hour periods. An “hour” at Smith University is 55 minutes long. Rating the course sections, Kelly took into account three factors: content, instructor, and timing. The rating is the weighted average of the three factor ratings. She rated the content of the course based on her interest in it, using a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (extremely interested). The reputation of the instructor is also a value from 1 to 5, coming from published student comments (http://www.ratemyprofessors.com) and word of mouth from classmates. The timing of the course is also a number from 1 to 5, and takes into account things such as the times that most of the senior class gets together in the common rooms to watch shows such as Glee, The Walking Dead, and The Big Bang Theory. Kelly wonders how to use this information to obtain a good schedule.