Methods of OR: A new graduate course

Abstract

A new course entitled "Methods of Operations Research (OR)" was introduced at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Stellenbosch University during the second half of 2001. The aim of this course was to introduce students of OR to the trauma of mathematical modelling in real-world scenarios, instead of merely teaching them a number of theoretical OR-related topics in the form of a lecture-driven course with an examination at the end. Therefore this project-driven course, which is offered in collaboration with a number of partners in industry, is assessed on a continued evaluation basis, by means of written reports and oral presentations by students, after having physically, or at least virtually, visited real-world OR application sites. The objectives of the course, its structure and contents, as well as lessons learnt and some student feedback are described in this paper. A selection of projects used in the course are described in some detail in an appendix.