TITLE:
Data-Driven Minicourse Design for Operational Research and Its Practice
AUTHORS:
Shijun Fu
KEYWORDS:
Operational Research, Data-Driven Minicourse, Minicourse Design, Online Course Design, Flipped Classroom Technique
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.11 No.6,
June
16,
2020
ABSTRACT: This paper explores the data-driven minicourse design for operational research at Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences. Situating this article on literature review, numerical simulation and comparison analysis methods, it previously sets the minicourse objectives as “can operate data processing”, beyond that “may build mathematics model to optimize real problems in engineering fields, especially in logistics engineering field”. Then, this article rearranges course contents into twelve modules and delineates each module in a way of a brief explanation with numerical example. These examples are solved by Matlab or related software. To disseminate applicable skill, we also released these Matlab codes which may be served as templates for secondary development of operational research pedagogy. The data-driven minicourse may be carried out in ways of both offline classroom and online mobile internet classroom, of which some modules are especially suitable to be implemented in flipped classroom pedagogy. Comparing with operational research implemented in undergraduate majors at other universities, our minicourse design is characterized as data-driven style, logistics industry-focused, mini case study pedagogy, rich mobile internet resources, as well as applicable skill training. Learners’ feedback confirmed that the minicourse design equipped them with model application and software skills helpful for a successful career.