An Operations Research–Based Teaching Unit for Grade 12: The ROAR Experience, Part III

In this paper, we finish describing the project and the experimentation of Ricerca Operativa Applicazioni Reali (ROAR; in English, Real Applications of Operations Research), a three-year project for higher secondary schools. ROAR is composed of three teaching units addressed to grades 10, 11, and 12, respectively. To improve students’ interest, motivation, and skills related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, ROAR integrates the teaching of mathematics and computer science through operations research. Its implementation started in 2021 in a grade 10 class at the scientific high school IIS Antonietti in Iseo (Brescia, Italy). We provided the details of the first two units in previous papers. Here, we focus on the third and last unit, carried out from October 2022 to January 2023, with the same students, then in a grade 12 class. Similarly to the first two units, we describe objectives, prerequisites, topics and methods, the organization of the lectures, digital technologies used, and a challenging final project that, this time, involved the manufacturer company Filtrec S.p.A. with a case. After analyzing the feedback from students, teachers, and practitioners engaged in the experimentation, we reflect on the entire experimentation and provide some insights to replicate a similar experience. Funding: G. Colajanni was partially supported by the research project Programma Ricerca di Ateneo UNICT 2020-22 linea 2, Ottimizzazione di Modelli di Network slIce 5G con UAV, the Italian Ministry of University and Research and the European Union for the Programma Operativo Nazionale project on Research and Innovation 2014-2020, D.M. 1062/2021, and the GNAMPA-INdAM Group. A. Raffaele was partially supported by the National Group for Scientific Computation. E. Taranto was partially supported by the National Group for Algebraic and Geometric Structures, and their Applications. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2023.0065 .