Guest Post: Using a Lab/Project Component in Our Texas Tech Summer OM Class

Phillip Flamm, who is the Core Course Coordinator for OM at Texas Tech U., provides today’s Guest Post–his 5th for us.  Phillip teaches in the ISQS Department at the Rawls College of Business. He can be reached at p.flamm@ttu.edu.

We have used a lab/lecture component successfully for our undergraduate  Introduction to Operations Management course at Texas Tech for several years. During the summer sessions we changed to a strictly lecture/exam format due to the brevity of the session (30 calendar days per session). There have been two negative consequences of the summer session approach: first, the students miss out on the lab portion (preparing a business plan for a start up manufacturing business) and secondly, some students have scheduled the class in the summer to avoid the lab component (enrollment had swelled to 200 total students each summer). This summer we attempted to rectify that situation with a little creative scheduling:

• Combined 100 students into two sections, one for each summer session
• Class met Monday-Friday for 1 hour and 50 minutes
• I handled the lectures for 1 hour and 20 minutes daily
• For the other 30 minutes I enlisted the help of a very talented PhD student (who had taught the lab portion before) to break the group into two 50 person sections (roughly 16 teams each)
• During the lab portion teams prepared a slightly shorter version of the manufacturing start up business plan (presented in verbal and written form)
• Projects were presented and graded the last four days of each session (I graded half the teams and the PhD student graded the other half during the same time slot)

The hybrid approach seemed to be a huge success. Summer school students received the great learning experience of preparing a business plan from an operations perspective and the students attempting to dodge the lab component got a difficult, but necessary life lesson. In addition, the PhD student was able to get a little wider range of teaching experiences (lecturing large sections, organizing/advising student teams, and grading presentations) than is normally available. It was a win/win for all!