Practice Summary: Seminar Assignments in a University-MATLAB-Based Decision Support

Universities follow a long tradition of assigning students to courses based on stu-dent preferences while taking into account constraints such as the rooms to be used. In this context, theoretical approaches aid us in developing algorithms that can be helpful in prac-tice. Our contribution to this subject is a practice summary in which we discuss the most important findings of a project to develop a MATLAB-based stand-alone software system to solve the seminar assignment problem at the FernUniversita center dot t in Hagen, Germany. The use of our software at three departments has already enabled annual savings of nearly 20,000 euros in personnel costs, which corresponds to a reduction of around 500 person-hours per year. Apart from important technical aspects of our work, the reported savings potential pro -vides valuable information for making decisions on future similar software projects.