I am teaching a PhD seminar on public sector operations research this semester [Find it here!]. I am having students blog in lieu of problem sets and exams. You can read my welcome post here and you can read more about the course here. The course is a mix of application and theory, and I expect that the posts will be more about the application than the theory unless the students write about their research. But maybe they will surprise me.
The students submitted their first blog post today. A new post is due every two weeks until the end of the semester. I have to admit that their first blog posts really impressed me. Blog posts were about the students themselves, how they discovered operations research, and what they hope to learn in the class. Students discussed specific issues such as an internship at the State of Wisconsin, how to route a bus around a dangerous mountain path, how to measure performance in a human centered system, ethics, disasters, and sports scheduling.
Please leave comments if you wish. The students are required to read and comment on other blog posts as part of the course. Knowing that the course blog has readers will be a good motivator for the students.
The first two lectures overviewed the history of public sector operations research. Next, we will dive into models (both deterministic and stochastic). I’ll eventually post a list of some of our readings on Punk Rock OR. Stay tuned!
I am looking forward to a good semester with this group of students. On Wisconsin!
Punk Rock Operations Research 
February 2nd, 2016 at 3:14 pm
Sounds like a lot of homework to me! 🙂
February 2nd, 2016 at 4:08 pm
I expected some snark from you!
It might end up being “work,” but I trust that the students will be more efficient with blogging as we go. I have to admit that it was a lot of work to read and comment on all of the posts, but I learned a lot from my students. And that was a lot of fun 🙂