Second site

An exhibition by four artists from Roma/Gypsy/Traveller communities. [From the press release]

Two-machine open shop scheduling with special transportation times

The paper considers a problem of scheduling n jobs in a two-machine open shop to minimise the makespan, provided that preemption is not allowed and the interstage transportation times are involved. In general, this problem is known to be NP-hard. We present a linear time algorithm that finds an optimal schedule if no transportation time exceeds the smallest of the processing times. We also describe an algorithm that creates a heuristic solution to the problem with job-independent transportation times. Our algorithm provides a worst-case performance ratio of 8/5 if the transportation time of a job depends on the assigned processing route. The ratio reduces to 3/2 if all transportation times are equal.

The varieties of student experience - an open research question and some ways to answer it

Based on meetings of the Society for Research into Higher Education’s Student Experience Network over the past three years, the genuinely open research question is posed whether there is one or more undergraduate student experience within English higher education. Answering this question depends on whether what is taught or what is learnt is examined. If the latter, then a unitary student experience can be said to exist only in the narrowest of normative senses. What undergraduates actually learn – defined in the widest sense – is the $64,000 question of research on the student experience. Various ways to answer this question are proposed, including using students to research students. Conceptual tools to apply to findings can be developed from youth studies and cognate disciplines, particularly in relation to student identities and aspirations. Lastly, these proposals are placed in the wider context of comparative models of the varieties of student experience, including those emerging in the UK’s national regions.