Distributed Course Allocation with Asymmetric Friendships

Abstract Students’ decisions on whether to take a class are strongly affected by whether their friends plan to take the class with them. A student may prefer to be assigned to a course they like less, just to be with their friends, rather than taking a more preferred class alone. It has been shown that taking classes with friends positively affects academic performance. Thus, academic institutes should prioritize friendship relations when assigning course seats. The introduction of friendship relations results in several non-trivial changes to current course allocation methods. This paper explores how course allocation mechanisms can account for friendships between students and provide a unique, distributed solution. Specifically, we approach the problem by framing it as an asymmetric distributed constraint optimization problem and develop a new dedicated algorithm. Our extensive evaluation includes both simulated data and a study involving 177 students, focusing on their preferences regarding both courses and friendships. The findings indicate that our algorithm achieves significant utility for the students, maintaining fairness in the solution and adhering to the limitations on course seat capacities.