Guest Post: Using MyOMLab for Exams at Temple University

Today’s Guest Post comes from Professor Howard Weiss at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Howard, the developer of both Excel OM and POM for Windows,  is also Director of  Temple’s EMBA program.

When myomlab first became available in the Fall of 2009 I had some qualms about using it for my exams because it was new technology and I was worried that there might be technical problems. On my midterm exam, I gave my usual paper exam except that I put one question on myomlab in order to see how the process worked. It worked flawlessly. Even when one or two students had some issue in the middle of the exam, the exam reopened at the same point where it closed. For my final exam I gave half of the problems on paper exams and half on myomlab. The students loved getting their myomlab grade immediately. Of course, I loved not having to grade those exams and I also loved that students had different data from each other for the same problems.

When I surveyed my students they requested that the entire exam should be from myomlab. I am not sure how much of their opinion was positive towards myomlab and how much was negative towards my own questions but I certainly had no reservations about accommodating the students. Since that first semester I have used myomlab exclusively for my undergraduate exams. It is even nicer to use myomlab now than when it first came out because it now has a feature that allows me to enter my own problems or questions into the exam.

There can be one downside to using myomlab. Myomlab does not give partial credit in the way a professor would. For example, on my written exams, if a student entered a wrong demand rate in an inventory model but otherwise interpreted the results properly I would give half credit even though all of the answers would be wrong. In myomlab, the student gets no credit. Of course, I have warned my students about this and told them they need to be extra careful when using myomlab just like they need to be extra careful when filing a tax return. Myomlab is as unforgiving as the IRS when mistakes are made!