Promoting Operations Research education using a new web - accessible didactic tool

Abstract

The scope of this work is to present a new tool with clear didactic orientation, which will serve as a complementary means in teaching graphs algorithms. The proposed educational software can be used in courses like "Network Optimization" or "Graph Theory" and has been implemented using the Java Programming language. This Java applet is freely available, platform independent and highly interactive. The most important feature is that it is Web - accessible and can be used from any remote place, through a common Internet browser. It is a friendly application, for the Operations Research Scientist, as also for the novice student. It features visualizations of the Depth First Search (DFS), Breadth First Search (BFS), algorithms for determining graph connectivity (strong or not), topological ordering and the Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. Furthermore, its use is analytically shown through an illustrative example. Benefits and drawbacks are thoroughly described in order to support the significance of this tool in Operations Research education and also possible future work is discussed.