(INFORMS, 2016-01) Muñuzuri, Jesús; Cortés, Pablo; Grosso-de la Vega, Rafael; Onieva, Luis; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Organización Industrial y Gestión de Empresas II
Because of its mathematical and computational components, operations research (OR) is not simple to teach or
to learn, despite its innumerable industry applications. However, advanced OR is included in many graduate
degrees related to industrial engineering, where students need these techniques to solve complex optimization
problems. Faced with the problem of teaching heuristic methods to master’s students at the University of Seville,
we developed a problem-based approach whereby instead of listening to lectures and taking exams on these
techniques, one algorithmic technique is randomly assigned to each student, who must apply it to solving a
certain optimization problem. Here we discuss our approach to putting our heuristics course into practice, the
problems we faced, how we addressed those problems, the positive results obtained, and the lessons learned.
