A Utility-based Optimization Model for Allocating Student Teams to Community Projects

Participation in community-based projects provides students with invaluable benefits, including gaining practical experience and developing a sense of connection and belonging within the community. Nevertheless, the projects to which students are assigned can significantly influence their overall experience in this form of learning. Rather than relying on an approach that randomly assigns students to projects and often results in a mismatch between student preference and assigned project, we propose an optimization model to allocate community-based projects to students. The students provided a ranking of their project preference and 89 percent of all students received either their first or second choices. The optimization modeling approach not only streamlines the student-to-project allocation process for project coordinators but also ensures a consistent consideration of all relevant variables.