Ranking System (by HTW)
The ranking system provided by the HTW is still the most important set of rules that we had to follow and we could not change it for the course distribution. Although the ranking system might sound fair at first, the students from the higher ranks have the opportunity to receive courses without restriction. This could lead to people getting courses they only wanted as an insurance for the case that they do not get a different course, while other people do not get to attend it, even though it might have been the course they wanted the most.
Priorities
So after thinking about what would be the best way to assign the courses to the students, so that the majority would be satisfied with it, we thought of a priority system. According to how much the students really want to attend specific courses, they can order their desired courses into different priorities. The higher the priority for a specific course is, the more likely it is for the student to get assigned to it. Particularly because the students also have to choose a desired amount of courses they want to attend, there will be more course spaces available, since it is not possible to get more courses than the desired amount. In addition, as soon as there are less free spaces in a course than registrations in the highest unassigned rank, those with the highest priorities are admitted immediately and the rest are drawn.
The students can then use our drag and drop method to create their own individual priority list. We chose this method, because we found it to be intuitive and wanted to remain consistent with the usability of our application.
Currently, there is a test run live where all the IMI students who would want to attend elective courses can participate in.