Teaching OR/MS with Cases: A Review and New Suggestions

Teaching cases have become a cornerstone of operations research and management science (OR/MS) education since the early 1990s, when the focus of the pedagogy largely shifted to an applied, model-building emphasis. I provide a review of the literature related to the use of teaching cases in general as well as their use specifically within OR/MS courses. I discuss the pedagogical benefits and the challenges in using teaching cases to teach OR/MS methods and their application. I conclude by offering some practical suggestions to assist instructors looking to implement cases in their classrooms for the first time or to improve their effectiveness in using teaching cases.