An Evolutionary Multi-Objective Approach to the Problem of Building College Student Groups

Abstract

The creation of working groups of students in education is a common process that is often developed by the teacher intuitively. However, such a process is actually a complex task since various students and criteria must be taken into account. In general, these criteria are often in conflict because they are a reflection of the educational interests of teachers and on the other hand, the individual preferences of students. In this sense, this paper has as general goal: to propose a mathematicalcomputational solution that efficiently automatizes, in terms of computational time and solution quality, the creation of working groups of college students. The results obtained from two real scenarios of the Universidad Tecnica Estatal de Quevedo indicate that the proposal is an effective alternative to the traditional model.

Keywords

• group building
• evolutionary multi-objective optimization
• metaheuristics