A Decision Making Method for Educational Management Based on Distance Measures

We develop a new approach for decision making in educational management based on the use of distance measures. We focus on the selection of a studies plan from the perspective of an academic institution. We try to develop this approach showing the benefits of establishing an ideal plan that we compare with the available alternatives. We use the Minkowski distance, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator and the interval numbers. The use of the Minkowski distance allows to make comparisons between the ideal plan and the available ones in the market. The OWA operator is an aggregation operator that provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators that includes the maximum, the minimum and the average criteria, among others. And the interval numbers is a very useful technique to represent the information when the environment is very complex, because it gives all the possible results from the minimum to the maximum. We introduce a new aggregation operator called the uncertain generalized ordered weighted averaging distance (UGOWAD) operator. It is a distance aggregation operator that uses the main characteristics of the Minkowski distance, the OWA operator and the interval numbers. We develop an illustrative example where we can see the usefulness of the UGOWAD operator to select a studies plan in education management. The main advantage of using the UGOWAD is that we can consider a wide range of distance aggregation methods in the decision problem. Then, the decision maker gets a more complete view of the decision problem, being able to select the alternative that better fits the interests.