This year the Education Resources Committee of IFORS is beginning to address the challenge of providing access to ORMS educational materials worldwide. The impetus of the effort is the need for examples and ideas by faculty in Developing Countries. Often these faculty are "lone practitioners" or small groups of people with scant resources, and are particularly in need of access to materials.
Back in the dark ages not so long ago, all ORMS Professors had access to the primary teaching props of the field: a blackboard and the back of an envelope (or, in more advanced discussions, the napkin). However, times have changed significantly and ORMS faculty today have a wealth of information they can use to present, explain, illustrate and test students on the principles in their classes. Some have developed wonderful simulations, illustrations, bibliographies, cases or other materials that they make available to others for free or for some fee. Faculty in Developing Countries need access not only to what is usable on the web (such as that indexed on most sites), but also what materials might be available through snail mail for free or for a small fee.
The Internet overall, and the Web in particular, have reduced some barriers to sharing the wonderful tools some of our colleagues have developed worldwide. On the other hand, the Internet overall, and the Web in particular, have posed one significant barrier to sharing the wonderful tools: it often is quite difficult to find the materials. This is especially true if you seek materials that are written in non-English languages or use examples from Developing Countries. Without a resource for cataloging and searching for the materials, many needs continue to be unfulfilled.
This effort is not intended to compete with any existing effort, especially not with the INFORM-ED effort in the United States, the tutOR project in Australia, or the effort by people such as Valerie Belton and John Beasley in Europe, and Theo Stewart in South Africa (just to name a few). Rather, the Committee intends to bring together the work of individuals across the world, and build upon their work to provide a value-added contribution.
Right now, we believe the biggest contribution is to provide search capabilities through the IFORS web site (www.ifors.org) to make access to already available materials easier. We are considering multiple ways of providing search capabilities of existing materials, and will continue to evaluate their effectiveness in meeting the needs of the world-wide community. However, we are also looking at other mechanisms for making a contribution to the community and would be grateful for any ideas that you can provide.
To get this effort started, the IFORS Education Resources Committee is asking for your help. Please send me information about your secret weapons in teaching ORMS. The Committee needs to know what software you find useful, what cases have been successful, and what demonstrations you use. In fact, we would like you to identify all of the materials you use in your classes for our catalog. If the material is already available on a web site, we would like to know about that web site. If you use a tool or a case or a Summary described on a web site, we would like to know about that web site. If you have a particularly useful tool that is never referenced on the Web, we would like to know about them as well. We want to know about it despite where it is found, how it is used or in what language it is written. Send whatever you have to me at Vicki.Sauter@umsl.edu when you can. Then watch for more information about the web-based catalog you can use.
