Balanced Academic Curriculum Problem

The goal of the BACP is to ensure that students receive a comprehensive education that prepares them for success in both academic and real-world settings. By creating a balanced academic curriculum, educational institutions can help students develop the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

The original problem data and problem description is borrowed from [1].

The following input data is available

We can define multiple objective functions and minimize them such as :

• OF1 = Maximum total academic load in each period
• OF2 = Total time based academic load

The academic load of each course is visualized as follows:

Let's formulate the problem:

• Constraint 1 : Ensures the maximum course load is sensed by the objective function
• Constraint 2,3 : Ensure the max/min allowed course load is respected
• Constraint 4,5 : Ensure the max/min number of courses are selected in each period
• Constraint 6 : Adds prerequisite requirements to the model (course i can not be after course j)

The model is formulated in Pyomo and solved with cbc solver code :

If the OF1 is minimized, here is the result :

The OF2 needs more explanation

let's assume the more we get closer to the final periods the academic workloads become heavier:

It is observed that the modules are taken in t = 1--> 4 so from t=5 --> 10 the number of taken modules are 2 in each period (are erquired by teh constraints).

The prerequisite requirements are also satisfied:

What if we need to have the Pareto optimal front for these two objective functions ?

Here is the Pyomo model on Github

reference: www. csplib .org/Problems/prob030/

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