Curriculum Design Through Operations Research 1

Abstract

Operations Research techniques have been applied to a variety of educational problems, but rarely, if ever, to the most central decision of the school: what to teach, at what level to teach it, and what to leave out. The necessary formal tools appear now available: The required values may be calculated by the use of the “token strategy” or other judgmental technique. The required time costs may be independently estimated from analysis of materials, or prior class history, or similar aid. Of available OR techniques, the recursive method called dynamic programming is well-suited for optimizing curricular content.