Towards Developing a Student-Centered Optimization Course Syllabus

Abstract

In this study, we aim at developing a student-centered syllabus for an optimization course, Mathematical Programming, offered to graduate students campus-wide at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. In particular, graduate students from diverse engineering and science programs enroll in this course and they typically have varying learning objectives based on their graduate research needs. As it is not possible to cover all optimization topics during one semester of study, the motivation of the student-centered syllabus development is to prepare a syllabus that covers basic topics and modify it so as to include topics and assignments individual to each student. Therefore, the students can attain their self-defined learning objectives as much as possible while instructordefined basic learning objectives are also covered. As a first step towards developing a student-centered syllabus, we conducted a survey among engineering faculty at the campus to learn what basic optimization topics and software tools the faculty want their students to learn. This study presents the results of this survey and discusses what are the next steps planned for outlining a method to prepare a student-centered syllabus for the Mathematical Programming course.

Meeting Name

67th Annual Conference and Expo of the Institute of Industrial Engineers 2017 (2017: May 20-23, Pittsburgh, PA)

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Research Center/Lab(s)

Intelligent Systems Center

Comments

This project is sponsored by the Center for Education Research and Teaching Innovation (CERTI) located at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Keywords and Phrases

Curricula; Education; Engineers; Mathematical programming; Surveys; Teaching; Engineering faculty; Graduate students; Learning objectives; Missouris; Research needs; Science and Technology; Science programs; Syllabus; Students; Optimization course; Student-centered; Syllabus

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-1-5108-4802-3

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2017 Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 May 2017

Share

 
COinS