Teaching simulation and simulation for teaching: assessment of student preparation for discrete event simulation courses

  • Authors:

  • Leonardo Chwif;Marcos Ribeiro Pereira Barretto;Ray J. Paul

  • Affiliations:

  • Mauá School of Engineering, Praça Mauá 1, 09580-900, São Caetano do Sul, BRAZIL;University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Mello Moraes 2231, Sao Paulo, 05508-900, BRAZIL;Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, U.K.

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 33nd conference on Winter simulation
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Over the past years, there has been a growth in simulation courses both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A discrete event simulation course, as with any non-basic course, has some prerequisites that must be satisfied by students before attending classes. Statistics, computer programming and modeling are the most important, together with knowledge on the specific field being simulated (manufacturing, logistics, etcetera). Are students sufficiently prepared to follow a course on simulation? This work is related to the construction, application and analysis of an assessment instrument to evaluate student prerequisite knowledge for a discrete event simulation course. The proposed questionnaire was given to the 5th year engineering students at the beginning of our first year (72 hours) discrete event simulation introductory course at Mauá School of Engineering. The results obtained show the importance of making an assessment evaluation in order to improve the quality of simulation learning.