Teaching intermodal transportation in a quantitative way

Abstract

The traditional teaching of Intermodal Transportation focuses on the learning of qualitative analysis. However, it ignores the learning of quantitative methods. Essentially, the intermodal transportation introduces many operations problems when transporting cargo. These problems define the specialty of the intermodal transportation, and the students need more quantitative methods to tackle these problems. This paper summarizes the authors' teaching strategies and philosophy on Intermodal Transportation in a quantitative way. Starting from the design of teaching materials, a general picture of the processes in the intermodal transportation is first presented to students. Then, all the relevant operations problems during those processes are introduced in the categories of traditional Operations Research problems, and each category of operations problems are delivered to students systematically with systematic quantitative methods. However, teaching quantitative methods to students causes troubles to their learning experience. Several troubles and corresponding measures are also discussed.