Category: Guest Posts

Guest Post: Testing and Teaching at Stockton College

Today’s Guest Post comes from Prof. Bill Quain, at Stockton College, NJ. Bill has previously taught at Florida International U. and U. of Central Florida, and held endowed chairs at both.

Testing Is Teaching TooI

A few days ago, Jay and Barry’s OM Blog talked about the importance of testing in OM classes. I, also, have long been an advocate of using tests to teach.  Nothing focuses the mind more than when you are going to be asked to prove that you understood it.  But, I don’t usually give memorization tests.  In fact, most of my tests, even if they are forced choice (multiple choice) are open book exams.  I try to make them so thought-provoking that the students know in advance that they must know WHERE the content is located so that they can formulate answers.  However, my favorite type of test is problem solving.

 I do not take attendance in my classes.  To me, THAT is a waste of precious class time.  Almost all of my students know their own name, so what can be gained by calling them out?  Of course, it does help the professor learn the students’ names, and that is a good thing.

Instead of attendance-taking, I give a lot of quizzes, all unannounced.  The students are allowed to miss one or two.

Here is the main difference between my tests and those of other faculty members.  My students take each quiz and test as an individual, and then they take it in a group.  Each student’s grade is 80% from the individual score, and 20 % from the group’s score.  This process helps students learn, and it solves so many class problems.

For example, at the end of the group test, each student knows how they did, and they learned the right answers from their group.  In addition, if a group has a problem with a question, I just throw it out – not because it was too difficult, but because if a group cannot figure it out, it was a bad question. The students love this, and it cuts down so much on arguments.  My classes are happier, the students learn more, and I get better evaluations.  This is a trifecta of good news.

Guest Post: Using Personal Response System “Clickers” at Texas Tech U.

Our Guest Post today is from Phillip Flamm, who is an Instructor in the ISQS Dept. of the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. His earlier Guest Post talked about teaching large  OM sections.

I began my affair with personal response system clickers in 2004. I teach large sections (300- 400 students) of Intro to OM. The most serious problems I faced were getting the students to come to class and once they were there, keeping them engaged. At that time “clickers” were just starting to be noticed in higher education. I had what I thought at the time was a great idea: require the students to have clickers for answering questions in class. This was what I call the “Ugly” period. The first devices used microwave signals. Students complained about the prices ($40) and when 300 students all sent answers in at the same time about half of them weren’t recorded.  As a result, I decided to use the system for extra credit only.

The next 3 years ushered in what I call the “bad” period . Microwave signals were replaced with radio frequency signals. Now all signals were received, but the new devices were still expensive and were very easily damaged. Batteries lasted about two weeks. I was swamped with complaints.

In 2010 the “good” era began. Clickers were dependable, albeit  pricey. Fortunately, Texas Tech  had adopted Turning Point  as a campus-wide vendor and used clickers became available at every book store.  But  tracking results required downloading an Excel spreadsheet after class on a memory stick and transferring it to my office computer for totaling semester extra credit results.

Will 2011 be the beginning of the “great” era?  Software is now available that allows students to use a clicker, a cell phone, or a laptop to answer questions. This should be an improvement depending upon whether it is actually easier to collect and summarize data. I’m switching to Turning Point Response Ware . From my experience I can tell you that use of clickers does provide the following advantages:

  • Refocuses the students’ attention (4 to 5 questions per lecture)
  • Allows for collaborative learning
  • Reinforces key points that may be exam questions (if students don’t get the correct answer I back track to bolster understanding).
  • Can be an excellent method of substantiating assessment for accreditation purposes.

Happy clicking!

Guest Post: Teaching Quality Control with Olive Garden Breadsticks

Here is a great Chapter 6 teaching tip that is sure to make you popular with students – especially if you offer some extra credit.  Send them on a “breadstick quality control” mission.  A number of years ago, I helped the Olive Garden Restaurant chain solve an important problem.  Their breadsticks were inconsistent.  They were varying colors, sizes and shapes.  The breadsticks are a signature item for Olive Garden, so management needed to define the extent of the problem, and to change the quality control.

I will not go into the whole process of solving the problem, but I will tell you that I began by visiting Olive Gardens and observing the breadsticks, even measuring them and recording variations in color and shape.  There was no doubt about it, there was a striking inconsistency, indicating a quality control issue.  After working with their bakeries, and finding a problem in the production chain, the restaurants once again had a delicious, high quality, consistant product.

Are the breadsticks at the Olive Gardens still consistent?  Why not send teams of students to dinner and ask them to record their observations.  With today’s technology, they can even take pictures of “problem breadsticks” and share them with the class. You can also discuss these 3 questions with the class:

  1. Why are breadsticks such an important item in the Olive Gardens?
  2. What are other examples of signature items in restaurants or other businesses?
  3. Before you visit the restaurants to do a quality control survey, what equipment do you need, and what exactly will you be looking for?

    4. 

Prof. Bill Quain currently teaches at Stockton College in NJ. He previously held endowed professorships at the U. of Central Florida and at Florida International U.

Guest Post: Continuous Process Improvement Tools

We welcome  this Guest Post from  Kevin Watson, Asst. Prof. in the Dept. of Supply Chain and Info. Systems, at Iowa State U.

OM students are frequently reminded that data accuracy is a prerequisite to effective inventory management and operation of MRP systems- in fact Barry just blogged about this on November 4th. As professors, we often discuss the application of lean and quality improvement techniques; however, discussion tends to focus on manufacturing processes and students frequently miss that continuous improvement techniques can be applied to non-manufacturing activities. An article I just read, “Continuous Improvement Approach Reduces Errors in Records” , provides an example of continuous process improvement tools utilized to address paperwork errors.

The article discusses a holistic solution to address record errors in shop floor packets traveling with medical devices during manufacturing. MEDRAD, a 2003 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, experienced error rates as high as 20% in the paperwork necessary to track products through manufacturing ,resulting in compliance issues and causing unnecessary rework and delays. The company addressed this issue through the use of a quality improvement project utilizing technology, process, and people based solutions. The project resulted in a reduction of record inaccuracy to 2.2%, saving the company $40,000 and accruing significant non-financial benefits.

Addressing non-manufacturing errors while retaining the familiar touchstone of the manufacturing environment, it is an excellent means to expand student understanding of quality management tools applied to non-manufacturing processes and to begin the discussion of their application in the service/administrative environments. The article would be an excellent complement to the Quality Management chapters (Ch6/S6) and could be touched again during a discussion of inventory record accuracy in conjunction with Material Requirements Planning (Ch 14).

Guest Post: Trials and Tribulations of Teaching OM in Large Sections At Texas Tech

Teaching any subject in large sections (100 to 300 students) is difficult, but teaching operations management with heavy doses of quantitative/procedural type material presents a lot of unique challenges. In a large lecture hall students are farther away from the professor and as a result don’t feel comfortable asking questions and seem to be a bit less engaged than in smaller settings. The trick is to make the large room seem smaller and the lecture more interesting. Many may not want to admit this, but teaching in this setting requires more entertainment value to keep the students engaged.

Over the years I’ve used a combination of tactics that seem to be effective. Five minutes before class begins I play rock videos on the video screen with volume turned up to a high level. It energizes me and wakes up the students. When class starts I show a short funny video (1 minute or so) to help the students relax. As I lecture I move around a lot (back and forth and up and down the aisles) utilizing exaggerated arm/hand movements. I don’t use a microphone since I have a big voice, but I do talk louder than my normal speaking voice with more variation in speed of delivery and voice inflection. The idea is to make you seem larger and the room seem smaller.

During the lecture I sprinkle in operations management examples from my career with a little self-deprecating humor added. Some of the examples have definite entertainment value, but examples seem to foster understanding and I ask questions on exams based on those examples. I also utilize the Turning Technologies personal response system “clickers” (I’ll discuss my experience with PRS in the next blog). Use of the PRS system (in Power Point form) has three distinct advantages:

  1. Refocuses the students’ attention (4 to 5 questions per lecture)
  2. Allows for collaborative learning
  3. Reinforces key points that may be exam questions (if students don’t get the correct answer I back track to bolster understanding).

PRS responses may also be utilized as an additional assessment tool for accreditation justification or for research purposes.  In short, variation seems to keep students engaged and at a point where they can retain more.

Phillip Flamm is an Instructor in the Information Systems and Quantitative Sciences department of the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University

Guest Post: How We Use Software at Temple U.

Here is our 1st Guest Post. It comes from Prof. Howard Weiss at Temple U. As I mentioned in my Teaching Tip blog on 9/21, Howard has developed  and maintains the software that accompanies our texts. He has been on the cutting edge of using computers to teach OM for over 2 decades.

Howard Weiss writes:

When I began using software in my OM class it was Lotus 123…remember that?! I would display the spreadsheets from the front of the classroom. But on their teaching evaluations, several students requested hands-on use of software rather than just watching me. I experimented by running half of each course in the classroom and half in the public computer lab. Recall that this was at the time when few students had PCs at home. The experiment was a success, and  my departmental colleagues followed the half-time lab model. At the same time, in addition to public labs, teaching labs were being configured. Since then, roughly at the time when Windows and Excel began to become popular, all of our sections have been scheduled for half- time in the classroom and half-time in the teaching lab. We are a large school, so to make scheduling easier we have two sections of OM taught simultaneously. One section is in the classroom while the other is in the lab and vice-versa for the other lecture that week.

Changing to the alternating classroom/lab format meant a restructuring of the lectures. I try to lecture on qualitative material on the first day and then use the lab on the second day for the quantitative material rather than mixing the qualitative and quantitative material. My labs include exercises in Excel in order to build the students’ Excel skills, use of both POM for Windows and Excel OM so that the students can decide which they prefer, and use of the Active Models that accompany the Heizer/Render textbook.

Having developed POM for Windows and Excel OM, I spend a significant amount of my personal time continuously maintaining and improving these packages. I am always available to respond to any requests for help of any sort from you or your students. You can reach me at dsSoftware@prenhall.com.

 If you would like to share your teaching experiences, please just email us and we will post your Guest Blog.