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Issues in Developing an Undergraduate Simulation Course

Experience in developing an undergraduate simulation course is described. The course introduces the philosophies, principles, and methodologies for discreteevent simulation modeling. Strategy in choosing the course simulation software is discussed, plus important areas of teaching emphasis are highlighted. INTRODUCTION Simulation is one of the most important operations research techniques [Lane et al., 1993]. Cochran et al. [1995] indicates that more than half (58%) of simulation practitioners learn simulation at a university. Given this high percentage, what does one teach in a introductory (university) simulation course? To answer this question, the first step is to understand how simulation is applied. There are many papers that describe the simulation process, diagnose the common problems and pitfalls that can occur during a simulation study, or offer advise on how to perform a study [Dietz, 1992; Annino and Russell, 1979; Gogg and Mott, 1993; Law, 1986; Law and McComas, 1986; Musselman, 1993; Sadowski, 1991; Thesen and Travis, 1991; and Ulgen, 1991 are a small sampling]. After a review of these papers, an undergraduate simulation courses was developed to introduce students to the concepts of model building and simulation. Specific objectives of the course include: • Understanding what a model is and identifying important general modeling principles. • Understanding how simulation modeling can improve the performance of an existing systems. • Knowing which problems are best studied with discrete-event simulation. • Understanding what aspects of a real system to include in the model. • Understanding how to develop a model in a specific language. • Understanding how to analyze simulation output. To cover these important objectives, the course is divided into several components (Table 1). The course is in progress as this paper is being written. Therefore, the course outline is tentative and modifications that occur will be presented at the conference. The remainder of this paper offers insight into selecting the simulation software for the course and highlighting important issues to be taught. In developing a simulation course, a key question is selecting what simulation software the students will learn and on what hardware platform will they learn it. SELECTING THE SIMULATION SOFTWARE Cochran et al. [1995] report that simulation practitioners (in industry and universities) perform simulation studies with personal computers 42% of the time, workstations 29%, mainframes 20%, and minicomputers 9%. As part of their study, they found that industry’s use of mainframes for simulation studies is nearly zero. Simulation Hardware Platform Table 1: Outline of the Undergraduate Simulation Course. Topic Objective What is a Model? Provide an understanding of how models describe a system, how different types of models exist and compare with one another, and introduce principles for developing a model. What is Computer Simulation? Provide an overview of computer simulation, a discussion on the goals/objectives of simulation, simulation uses and disadvantages, simulation components. The Simulation Process Provide an understanding of the steps involved in developing a simulation model in a specific language and validating the model.