Short Cases for Teaching Management Science: Their Role in Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice

In this paper we describe some of the advantages of using cases in teaching introductory management science courses. We start by describing what we have found to be the advantages of the case method, followed by a description of what kind of cases we found to be best for use in introduction management science courses and examples of our experience in encouraging the actual use of management science techniques by our students. We conclude with a description of some guidelines we have found useful for our students and some comments about the future of case analysis in management science courses.