Operations and Logistics Management

Software packages are frequently used to support the teaching of quantitative methods. In one possible approach, the educator demonstrates how to use a software package which implements the method considered in the lecture. In an alternative approach, students have to implement the considered method on their own. A popular type of software package used in Master of Business Administration classes for the second approach is the spreadsheet, since students can "program " in an intuitive way by entering formulas in the cells of the worksheet. While letting students implement a method on their own normally takes much longer than just a demonstration by the educator, it can be argued that the students develop a better understanding of the method through active learning. In this context, the spreadsheet-based tutoring system ExcelTutor was developed to help students learn the steps necessary to compute the results of a specific method. After a student has formulated the method on his or her own, ExcelTutor verifies the correctness of the final results and provides feedback on the time needed for the implementation. 1