Our Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches Operations Management in the ISQS Department at Texas Tech University
I have taught Operations Management, using the Heizer/Render/Munson text, for four summers now, with the following course guidelines:
- Using power point pages with 3 slides per page and lines for notes to the right, teams reviewed notes together following lectures to clean up any questions. Lecture review is compounded daily by adding the new lecture material and begins again after an exam
- Worked daily quizzes together for a team grade
- Prepared quantitative teaching sessions during the summer class
- Calculated quantitative problems together for a team grade
Exam grades for these summer teams were considerably higher than scores in my regular Fall and Spring semester classes (average 89% compared to 64% regular class average). This Total Team Collaborative Learning (TTCL) improved student performance in the summer setting.
So, what does this mean? It appears that TTCL tends to improve learning, retention, and analytical abilities. I would really like to find a certain format that would help all students learn more, learn faster, and perform better. I think that selecting and training section leaders to be more proactive when it comes to individual performance and integration into the team environment are the keys.
In the Fall, the business school has a new classroom with video equipment at each table. This could be used to train leaders and focus group members and I will continue to experiment with TTCL.