Adaptation of course of operations research to needs of engineering study programmes by including specific models and examples

Abstract

The course "Operations Research" or some parts of its themes are included in many study programmes. It is explained by a wide variety of applications of operations research models: operations research has been extensively used in engineering, industry, economics, management, business process, public administration, services and, of course, in agriculture, fisheries, mining, forestry, water resource system planning and management. Operations research in each of the mentioned application areas has its own history and traditions; special modifications of models and methodologies of operations research have been developed in the context of an application area. Successful teaching of the subject includes the real-world contexts, the usage in a particular specialty. The authors of this paper will share their long-term experience in teaching of "Operations Research", the main attention will be devoted to specific models and examples to be included in this course to adapt it to the needs of students of rural engineering specialities. Specific examples of production and service systems planning, networking, allocation and transportation problems, resource systems and supply chain planning and management, job scheduling, staff scheduling, queueing models and their illustrations could be considered as adaptation resources. The authors will discuss also how modelling tools such as JMT (Java Modelling Tools), QTP (Queueing ToolPak), CPN (Coloured Petri Nets) Tools, GeoGebra and Microsoft Project could be effectively used to support the study process.

On usage of visualization tools in teaching mathematics at universities

“…The role of visualization in teaching mathematics has been the subject of much research (see, e.g. [1][2][3][4] and references therein). Many reports, devoted to the role of visualization, to using the visualization tools or difficulties with them in learning and teaching mathematics were presented during the Annual Conferences of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (review of some of these presentations from 1988 till 2005 could be found in [5]).…”