OR/MS Today - February 1999

February 1999

A New Pedagogical Initiative:
Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium

By James J. Cochran

The environment in which we interact with our students is changing rapidly. Emerging technologies are changing the way we communicate with students. Administrators and colleagues from other departments want us to integrate courses in order to provide a broader and more cohesive perspective. Prospective employers want better prepared students who can produce immediately upon graduation. Students question the relevancy of operations research and management science courses.

While great strides toward achieving these objectives may be made through utilization of creative pedagogical approaches, it is difficult to know where to learn about these approaches or how to successfully implement them in the classroom.

INFORMS has supported many recent pedagogical initiatives aimed at giving OR/MS faculty assistance in utilizing creative pedagogical approaches. Now the INFORMS Education Committee has developed INFORMS' first Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium. This event, comprised of a series of pedagogically oriented sessions and workshops, will take place April 30 - May 2, immediately preceding INFORMS' Spring 1999 Meeting in Cincinnati. The purpose of the Colloquium is to expose INFORMS members to a wide variety of creative approaches for teaching operations research and management science. Twenty respected and innovative instructors from INFORMS' constituent disciplines will present and demonstrate their methods for colloquium participants. Many of these sessions will provide live demonstrations that offer the audience an opportunity to actively participate.

The Concept

Topics covered in the sessions include (but are not limited to) effective management of large classes, use of active learning techniques and games in the classroom, integration of cases into operations research and management science courses, and recognition of various cognitive styles and their implications. Attendance in these sessions will be limited to Spring 1999 INFORMS Meeting attendees who are concurrently registered for the Colloquium.

Additionally, we have scheduled various two-hour workshops as part of the Colloquium. Three concurrent breakout workshops will discuss integrating spreadsheets into operations research and management science courses. On May 2, four additional breakout workshops on cross-integration of various disciplines with operations research and management science curricula will be held. Finally, a Colloquium workshop on effective classroom presentation techniques is scheduled for that afternoon. Spring 1999 INFORMS Meeting attendees who do not register for the Colloquium may still register for any of these workshops as space permits.

The Program

The Colloquium gets underway with a presentation, "Educational Musings," by INFORMS President Thomas L. Magnanti. Magnanti will reflect on the following questions:

Is education different today than it was in the early days of operations research and management science?

Will technology and distance education create new educational markets (providers and consumers and fundamentally alter the content and delivery of education?

Will tomorrow's universities place different emphasis on teaching and research?

On May 1, a presentation of "Cognitive Psychology & Learning Styles" will be made by Judith S. Liebman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Liebman will discuss the process of knowledge acquisition, various cognitive styles and their implications for our classroom effectiveness. She also plans to administer the Felder Learning Test and assist Colloquium participants in interpreting their scores.

Erhan Erkut of the University of Alberta follows with "Facing the Challenges of Large Classes." Erkut will discuss some ongoing initiatives of the INFORMS Education Committee that he chairs.

After a short break, Peter C. Bell of the Richard Ivey School of Business will present "Using Cases to Enrich the OR/MS Course."

Thomas A. Grossman, Jr. of the University of Calgary will conduct "Using Projects to Teach OR/MS." Grossman will explain how community-based course projects can be a powerful learning experience for students and instructors alike, whether in graduate operations research programs or undergraduate business programs.

"Teaching Operations Analysis Using Experiential Learning Concepts" will then be presented by John Muckstadt and Peter Jackson, both of Cornell University. Muckstadt and Jackson will summarize how operations and industrial systems applications are taught at Cornell using experiential learning concepts.

The next presentation will be given by Franz A. Dill of the Procter & Gamble Company's Analytics Center of Expertise. Dill will examine "What Are We Doing Right? What Are We Doing Wrong? Integrating, Measuring, and Visualizing Our Answers."

On May 2 the Colloquium will resume with a presentation by Richard C. Larson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "The Internet: A Tool for Exploring New Teaching/Learning Pedagogy."

Stephen G. Powell of Amos Tuck School of Business Administration will follow with "Teaching Modeling within Management Science." Powell, who organized last summer's "Teaching Management Science With Spreadsheets" workshop, will address the difficulties students with weak basic modeling skills have in learning the sophisticated tools of management science.

The concluding session of the Colloquium program, "The Road Warriors: Educating with the Virtual Research Team in Today's Global Environment," will be conducted by Dick Deckro and Jack Kloeber of the Air Force Institute of Technology. Deckro and Kloeber will discuss the necessity of thinking globally in academic research efforts, contending that good research projects may not be just down the hall in the lab or across town at a local plant, but can be (and are) anywhere in the world.

Registration Details

Colloquium registration fees are $40 for Ph.D. students and $120 for all other INFORMS meeting registrants. All Colloquium participants must also register concurrently for the Spring 1999 INFORMS Meeting. To be eligible to participate, a Ph.D. student must also:

provide evidence that he or she is a student in good standing in a Ph.D. program which emphasizes one of INFORMS constituent disciplines;

be within six months of completing all degree requirements; and

have a sincere interest in an academic career.

Space is limited, so registration will be accepted in the order received until capacity is reached. Spring 1999 INFORMS Meeting attendees who do not register for the Colloquium may register for any of the two-hour workshops at a reduced fee of $60 per workshop for full INFORMS members and $20 per workshop for student INFORMS members.

For further information: Visit the Spring 1999 Meeting website at http://www.informs.org/Conf/Cincinnati99 or contact Jim Cochran by telephone at (513) 529-4840 or by e-mail at cochrajj@econqa.cba.uc.edu

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