Teaching meta-heuristics within virtual learning environments

Modern education of operations research and management science (OR/MS) can greatly benefit from interactive learning methods in order to build and develop modeling and problem‐solving skills. In this paper we consider the teaching of meta‐heuristics as an important part of OR/MS with significant recent interest. We discuss possibilities of supporting the teaching of meta‐heuristics such as simulated annealing or tabu search through interactive learning. The paper also presents a survey of some relevant issues within VORMS (Virtual Operations Research/Management Science), a project currently undertaken at six universities within Germany, and provides a presentation of the advances regarding the teaching of meta‐heuristics within this project. Further ideas refer to incorporating hotframe, a heuristic optimization framework, into the virtual learning environment.