Teaching OR/MS Using Discussion Leadership
James L. Corner, Patricia Doyle Corner · INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics · 2003
The number of OR/MS courses offered has declined in the last 15 years. Academics and practitioners have debated how to reverse this trend to insure the managerial relevance of OR/MS courses. We use a teaching technique, discussion leadership, designed to augment the managerial relevance of OR/MS topics that is a variant of case teaching. It is nondirective and focused on management as problem solving. Discussion leadership also helps students develop managerial skills, including strategic thinking, communication, conflict resolution, logic, and visualization of links between technical solutions and competitive advantage. We particularly recommend it for teaching MBA and executive students. The synergy between the use of cases with their descriptions of managerial problems and the discussion leadership approach yields real benefits.