Category: Teaching Tips

Our insights on teaching from our years of experience.

Teaching Tip: Coronavirus and Your OM Class

It might be premature, but Chuck, Jay, and I have a suspicion that numerous live classes across the country may be pushed online after students return from spring break infected with the coronavirus. They’ve already done that for at least two weeks at the University of Washington and Stanford. Here are our thoughts about how our MyLabOperations Management can help.

 MyLab is actually perfect in situations like this. Not only can homework, quizzes, and tests be assigned and graded, but instructors may want to turn to other tools to help replace some normal classroom content. This could include the simulations but also assigning quite a few more of the company videos with cases and even referring students to our Solved Problem videos to help explain some of the mathematical content.

Self-contained Powerpoint slides are also available to all students and could be easily accessed. Instructor notes for those slides are contained in our Instructor’s Resource Manual (which is available to instructors on-line through the resource center), as are a number of suggestions for assignments outside of the classroom. Instructors might also wish to use features that they may not have in the past, such as our Active Learning Modules. For discussions and potential real-time interactions with students, instructors can access the MyLab Discussion Board feature or explore the possibilities of “virtual clickers” and other features available within “Learning Catalytics” (see the bottom of the home page in each MyLab course).

We believe that most students would be adaptable enough to move to an online course in the middle of a semester. And we are here to help instructors make the transition. If the switch to online eventually occurs at your school, MyLab has many features that can help.

Here are our emails if you need some help along the way: ProfRender@gmail.com; Munson@wsu.edu; and JHeizer@tlu.edu.

Teaching Tip: Professors’ Slow, Steady Acceptance of Online Learning

“Embrace” is probably too strong. “Acquiescence” suggests too much passivity. Whatever word you choose, though, the data indicate that faculty members — whether grudgingly or enthusiastically — are increasingly participating in and, to a lesser extent, accepting the validity of online education. Inside Higher Ed‘s new 2019 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology, shows a continuing uptick in the proportion of faculty members who have taught an online course, to 46%–compared to 30% in 2013.

While instructors surveyed who have taught online believe it made them better teachers, professors remain deeply divided about whether online learning can produce student learning outcomes equivalent to face-to-face instruction. Among the survey’s (n=2,145) other findings:

Nearly 40% of instructors say they fully support the increased use of educational technologies, up from 29% in 2017.

Neither faculty members nor administrators believe online learning is less expensive to offer than its on-ground alternative — unless colleges reduce spending on instruction or student support.

A majority of professors  oppose colleges’ use of external vendors to deliver online academic programs, except for marketing to students.

Six in 10 faculty members believe academic fraud is more common in online courses than in face-to-face courses.

The growing proportion of instructors who have taught online is a logical outgrowth of the fact that more colleges are embracing online learning to reach students they couldn’t otherwise enroll and to respond to demands from students for more flexibility in when and how academic programs are offered. While faculty participation in online learning continues to edge up over all, it is extremely uneven. Public college instructors are far likelier than their private college peers to have taught an online course; midcareer professors are more likely to teach online than are their younger or older peers; and B-school faculty members are likelier to teach online than their science and humanities counterparts.

Those who have taught online overwhelmingly believe it has made them better at their jobs, and 3/4 say the experience has helped them develop pedagogical skills and practices that have improved their teaching.

Teaching Tip: Preparing Your Online OM Course

Just a few days ago, I received an email from an OM colleague who will be teaching his first online course–and seeking advise. Both instructor and student have concerns: assignment quality/rigor, technology, the course management system, course design, the expected workload. One of the greatest concerns, though, is the instructor’s presence on the course, writes Faculty Focus (Sept. 16, 2019). Online instructors should view themselves as crucial as the technology they are using.

Just as people weave their digital experiences, the student is performing the same process in the online educational environment. Based on a student’s digital behavior on the course, the instructor may better tailor assignments (such as how long it takes to read items the student has posted), adjust activities according to student assignment interaction, or make changes based on the student’s “digital record.”

Email, texting, chat apps, social media, and video encompass faster and immediate communication, and educators can implement these into their own online learning environment. Students are accustomed to immediate responses, so this conditioned behavior is expected within an online course. The instructor can provide a personalized experience for the student through prompt response time to emails, video chats, virtual office hours, audios to explain assignments, blogs, and a personal introduction video. These approaches communicate with the student fast and efficiently, contributing greater presence of the instructor in the online environment.

How online educators present themselves to the student, or how they frame themselves (talking about pets, hobbies, etc.), impacts positive behaviors on the course, opens the lines of communication, and affects student perception of the course in general. By providing a strong online presence, the educator has facilitated student engagement and encouraged active learning.

But one should be aware of the time the course will take. Time must be spent when developing audios for assignment, which may change from semester to semester. Video chats can sometimes turn into hour long conversations and writing an immediate individual assignment response may take time from other responsibilities.

Guest Post: Developing Supply Chain Interest and Employability Skills Together–A 30 Minute Class Exercise

Nancy Southin
Brent Snider
Rosanna Cole

Our Guest Post today comes from Nancy Southin at Thompson Rivers University, Brent Snider at University of Calgary, and Rosanna Cole at Surrey Business School.

Employers are increasingly demanding that business schools provide not only content knowledge to our students, but also facilitate improved skill development in areas such a resiliency, critical thinking, communication, and tolerance for ambiguity. While this may seem daunting as we plan our upcoming curriculums, it could be as easy as PIE. Partial Information Exercise (PIE) is an approach we have developed where select information is intentionally withheld from a classroom exercise or case. Students must identify what information is missing, seek it from the instructor, then integrate that new information.

Our Patio Swings Intermodal Shipping Competition is a 30-minute classroom exercise that challenges student teams to identify the all the necessary supply chain activities required to effectively ship patio swings from a foreign supplier all the way to a national retail chain’s stores in time for a spring sale. Students must determine what date the order must be placed, how many intermodal containers will be needed, what date those containers need to arrive at the supplier for loading, and how many additional part-time staff are needed to process the shipment through the retailer’s distribution center. Students learn about global supply chain activities while also developing the desired workplace skills since only half the information required is initially provided. This exercise has proven to increase student interest in global supply chain management jobs, get them thinking more critically than traditional cases, and create a highly engaged classroom environment. To date, it has been successfully conducted in both undergraduate and graduate supply chain classes, and in multiple countries.

If you are looking for a global supply chain classroom activity that combines content knowledge and skill development for students in an engaging 30 minute exercise, just contact us at nsouthin@tru.ca or brent.snider@haskayne.ucalgary.ca and we will send you the complete lesson plan – it’s as easy as PIE!

Teaching Tip: Two Cool Tech Tools for the Digital Classroom

It is important that we OM teachers find new ways to incorporate technology to stay current, enhance students’ educational experience, and support teaching and learning. Here are two tools from Faculty Focus (May 6, 2019) that may help:

Adobe Spark Adobe Spark is a web and mobile based tool that allows users to design visual content in the form of posts, videos, and web pages. It has three components: spark post, spark video, and spark page. Spark post creates a visual storyboard that represents what the user is desiring to convey. With spark video you can use images, video clips, and symbols to create a one-of-a-kind learning tool. The spark page allows you to insert pictures, videos, and text to curate content that reflects their unique perspective. Go to https://spark.adobe.com/ and sign up for a free account or download the mobile application via the iOS app store.

Remind A recent study examined the effects texting had on college students. Findings showed that students who received text message nudges from their instructors perform better than students who didn’t receive text message nudges. One tool/application that allows educators to communicate with students via text is Remind. Once you creates a course, students can sign up, send and receive messages by text, app, web, and e-mail. It is an excellent way of keeping students on track, even with a Learning Management System such as Blackboard, Canvas or Desire2Learn. Remind: (1) provides a way of communicating with students for any reason; (2) provides a method of communication to you and the students when life events happen; (3) is a great way of sending friendly reminders about assignments; (4) establishes a healthy student-to-teacher interaction regardless of whether the course is totally online or is a traditional face-to-face course. To get started go to https://www.remind.com and sign up for a free account.

Teaching Tip: Cue-Do-Review in Your OM Class

Cue-Do-Review is one way, writes Faculty Focus (April 8, 2019), to help ensure OM classroom instruction time is used effectively and efficiently. Targeting your behaviors at the beginning, middle, and end of a class session, students are more likely to connect with and remember content.

Quality instruction begins with an opening that engages students in the lesson’s purpose and processes. A critical element in the beginning of a lesson is linking new information to prior knowledge. The opening minutes of class offer a rich opportunity to capture students’ attention and get them prepared to learn. It is really useful for instructors to begin class with deliberate efforts to bring their focus to the lesson of the day.

Cueing whets student’s appetite for what is to come. You inform students what will be taught, how the instruction will be carried out, give an explanation regarding how the teaching process will help students learn, and identify your expectations.  Cueing can take as little as a few minutes and serves to focus attention on how the lesson will transpire.

In the Do phase, you lead the learning activities while eliciting responses from students regarding their understanding of content and concepts presented. The “Do” phase asks questions and helps students evaluate the information they are learning. This phase is the main course of the lesson. Although most time is spent here, the likelihood that information will be assimilated and applied effectively is largely dependent on the degree to which the lesson was initiated with a “cue”.

Finally, in the Review phase, you reinforce learning, and ask students how the teaching approach guided their learning. Critical content from the lesson is discussed and reviewed. During the last few minutes of class, many instructors try to cram in additional information, make added points, or issue reminders as students are packing up and ready to go. Not only are these last-minute bits of information largely ignored, but faculty miss opportunities to collect learner feedback.

 

 

Our New Chapter, Applying Analytics to Big Data in Operations Management

The marriage of business analytics, big data, and operations/supply chain management is a revolutionary change in our field. We are the first text to include a chapter (Module G) on this subject, which includes sections on data management, data visualization, and predictive and prescriptive business analytics tools. The topics include heat maps, conditional formatting for cleaning data, and pivot tables. The module includes numerous exercises that will use students’ Excel skills and show them the power of Excel in Big Data. This is a topic instructors have asked for and students will really appreciate!

The new edition is now available, so contact your personal Pearson rep for your copy at:

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/replocator/

Here is the first page of the new Module G.

Teaching Tip: Attracting Students to Supply Chain Management Careers

Perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch to compare the changes that the current workforce is experiencing to the first time that human beings stood upright, writes IndustryWeek (Oct. 23, 2018). This change certainly feels life-altering to employees who have gone from a world where intelligence resided in their own minds to now working directly with intelligence housed in machines.

“Robotics, Big Data manipulation, machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques are enabling machines to match or outperform humans in a range of work activities, including ones requiring cognitive capabilities. These rapid advances also make it possible for workers to turn over the more analytical tasks to computers and move on to activities that require human intervention, such as resolving problems and managing change,” explains Prof. Richard Crandall, at Appalachian State U.

Where historically there was a strong emphasis on quantifiable capabilities, now it is the softer skills that are needed. Skills such as the ability to work well in teams and being innovative and creative when evaluating problems are at the top of employers lists. The challenge today is to find that person who is proficient at the technical level and can provide leadership. (One study, by the way, found the demand for supply chain professionals exceeds supply by 6 to 1.)

In a recent report by Deloitte, talking about talents that supply chain employees should have, 73% of respondents say it is extremely or very important to have technical competencies. But even more, 79%, say leadership and professional competencies are extremely important. Other skills that are becoming more important are the ability to manage global/virtual teams, the ability to persuade and communicate effectively, and the skills to both lead and develop others.

The good news in all of this is that Millennials have career preferences that exactly align with what is needed. They are looking for challenging work and like being on teams. So when you are talking to your OM students about careers, supply chain management may ideal. Employees are touching the lifeblood of the organization and doing foundation work that is influencing how decisions are made.

Teaching Tip: Talking to Students About Manufacturing

Our OM students hold many misconceptions about the manufacturing industry. There’s a widespread belief that the U.S. manufacturing industry is in decline, that jobs are going overseas, and that the industry doesn’t provide fulfilling or well-paying careers, particularly for younger workers. But this couldn’t be farther from reality.

The Manufacturing Institute says that nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled in the next decade, and 2 million of those jobs will go unfilled (Industry Week, Oct. 23, 2018). The available jobs, even at the lower rungs of manufacturing, pay well, too. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary for manufacturing production jobs is $44,595 ($21.44 per hour). In truth, the average pay for the manufacturing industry is comparable with jobs in the technology sector. For example, the average base pay for a manufacturing supervisor is $64,118, for a manufacturing engineer $71,679, and for a director of manufacturing, $146,412. That’s significantly more than what most students expect when they think about compensation in the manufacturing industry.

There’s also a perception that manufacturing jobs are repetitive, monotonous, underpaid, and involve working in decrepit, dirty factories. But the industry has evolved and is more dynamic and complex than it used to be. There’s more technology, more data, more analysis, more creativity, more gamification, more critical thinking, and more problem solving.

Our students often don’t view manufacturing as a desirable career option, and that poses a big problem. The growth of industry depends on worker participation of all demographics. Hopefully, our OM course will show that there are real opportunities for them, from professional growth to dynamic learning environments to competitive compensation. While the service sector remains a big part of the U.S. economy, manufacturing also contributes mightily and isn’t going away anytime in the foreseeable future.

Teaching Tip: Three Active Learning Strategies for Your OM Students

We would like our students to retain every bit of learned material in our OM classes. However, many students come to us having achieved academic success by memorizing the content, regurgitating that information onto an exam, and promptly forgetting a good portion of it, reports Faculty Focus (Sept. 27, 2018). In OM, as well as other disciplines where new material builds upon the previous material, it is important for students to retain what they learn and as they begin their management careers.

Here are three active learning strategies for pushing students beyond simple memorization.

  1. Case studies stimulate the student’s own thinking and reflection, both individually and in groups. Through reflection, the student gains a broader view, increased understanding, knowledge, and deeper learning. We have 41 video case studies and 20 traditional case studies in the text (plus 2 dozen more at our web site) to select from.
  2. Simulation is another  a good method to help the student apply knowledge to real world scenarios. Our five simulations have proven to be one of the most popular tools we offer in MyOMLab.
  3. One-Minute Papers – Among active learning techniques, the 1-minute paper remains a simple yet effective way to gauge student learning. These papers get students to reflect on what went on in the classroom that day. Questions should be open-ended so as to encourage reflection and feedback on the subject matter. Possible prompts for a 1-minute paper include:
    The clearest point of today’s class was:
    The muddiest point of today’s class  was:
    How I prepared for class today:
    What I liked best that helped me learn:
    What I wish had been discussed during today’s class:

We all know that lecturing is not the most effective manner of teaching OM, any more than cramming is an effective form of learning. Active learning strategies can move students from passive to active participation in learning; boosting retention in the process. As an added bonus, these methods fit well in the flipped learning environment that many of us are using today.

Teaching Tip: Those End-of-Semester Evaluations

Some years ago I was sitting with Ralph (who taught accounting) and Jim (a management prof) lamenting my Spring student teaching evaluations. I had just completed two sections of our MBA OM course. Both were for full time students, with about 35 in each class. One section loved me (almost all perfect scores) and the other section didn’t seem to like me at all. I went through the written comments slowly and painfully, not knowing exactly what to change come Fall. Ralph and Jim had exactly the same problem. They were excellent and dedicated teachers, working hard to deliver a superior education. We finally took a vow to not obsess on written criticisms so much that it ruined our summers.

Were we over-reacting? Do we fixate on the few negative comments? With the forms now filled out online, half the class isn’t providing feedback and those that do are likely the ones with the axes to grind. And you know students run through them as quickly as possible and mark the task completed.

Here are some suggestions from Faculty Focus (May 30, 2018):
Step back. Read every positive comment three times and smile.
Look again later, but with objectivity. How many negative comments were there, versus no comments and positive ones? Delete the emotional language in the comment. Is there constructive feedback? Does the student have a point?
Decide what you’re going to do. (Doing nothing might be a perfectly appropriate response). Do you need more information? How might you get it? Are you considering making a change based on the feedback? How about some input before you do?
Talk to your own Ralph and Jim. Ask if they have any good ideas.
Talk to a few students. Students are good at clarifying what other students mean. They can venture some guesses as to how representative the comment might be.

Finally, recognize that you are not alone. Don’t in your wildest dreams imagine you are the only teacher who’s gotten a blistering comment.

Teaching Tip: The Benefits of OM Student Study Groups

Maybe we should be making a stronger pitch for student-led OM study groups. There’s all sorts of research documenting how students can learn from each other, reports Faculty Focus (May 16, 2018). In one recent study (of 463 students at 38 colleges), students said they opted to study with others because the professor encouraged it and their peers invited them. Their groups handled all the meeting logistics and members decided collectively what they would do during the session.

Here’s what’s impressive: the top 3 study strategies students reported using in these groups were asking each other questions, discussing course materials, and quizzing each other. Those are evidence-based strategies. Asking questions and discussing the content are activities that deepen learning, and testing with questions enhances memory by providing retrieval practice. Each of these has substantial empirical support with regard to benefits for long-term retention, falling into the category of “desirable difficulties.”

And there’s more good news. The data showed that a student’s GPA correlated positively with how frequently study strategies such as making outlines, flashcards, study guides, and short, but frequent, group meetings took place. Students said they chose to study with others in hopes it would improve their understanding of the material. And most of them reported that it did. More than 60% said their level of learning in study groups was somewhat more or a lot more than they learned when studying individually. Almost 70% said that being in a study group increased their motivation to study.

Some tips for your students: (1) use small groups (3-5 max); (2) studying with friends is good, but bringing in outsiders deepens understanding; (3) meet often, but for short periods; (4) expect group members to come prepared; (5) explain things to each other and practice doing problems; (6) don’t just “go over” or reread class notes or text material, and don’t recopy notes.

Teaching Tip: Dealing with Students Multitasking in Your OM Class

The amount of multitasking students do during our OM classes and while studying is alarming. More than 85% of students in surveys nationwide say they have their phones on in class, are looking at texts as they come in and during class, and 70-90% say they respond to texts in class. And this is happening in courses with policies that prohibit cell phone use!

But this also happens when students study outside of class.  In one study where students were observed for 15 minutes, they were only on task (that is, studying what they were supposed to be studying) 65% of the time. In another study, where a 3-hour study period was carefully monitored with camera and eye tracking devices, students were distracted by media unrelated to studying 35 times.

Research studies have shown over and over that task switching and multitasking compromise learning outcomes. Students who use devices when they study and/or when they’re supposed to be listening, perform less well on quizzes and exams, and they receive lower course grades overall. Surely, if students knew how these devices were lowering their grades and diminishing their learning they would change their behavior.

But in two new studies cited in Faculty Focus (Jan. 31, 2018), educational interventions astoundingly failed to change students’ behavior.  In response to direct questions about the effects of multitasking, students were fully aware of the potential harms. They believed that their grades would improve if they paid better attention in class and the majority reported that they were motivated to improve their grades. What seems to be keeping the phones on is the high anxiety students feel when they’re off and how dependent they have become on these devices. (And are faculty totally immune?)

Learning is at stake, and we still have a lot to figure out.

Guest Post: Temperatures–A Decision Table Example

Our Guest Post today comes from Howard Weiss, Professor of Operations Management at Temple University.

I use the following example in my OM class to discuss maximin and minimax in a context the students readily understand and to demonstrate several Excel functions to my student. (It is based on a piece in Interfaces in 1990). Prior to class I search for the daily high and low temperatures in the previous month and copy them into a spreadsheet. The results appear in columns A and B.

Ultimately, I will ask my students which day was the hottest in that month and which day was the coldest. First, though, the average highs and lows in column B need to be converted to individual numbers which will be placed in columns D and E. Identifying the High temperature from column B gives me the opportunity to
• Show students Excel’s LEFT function
• Show students that the results of the LEFT function are characters, not numbers
• Show students Excel’s VALUE function to convert the characters to numerical values.
Identifying the lows is slightly more complicated due to the degree sign on the right of the values in column B which precludes us from using Excel’s RIGHT function. This gives me the opportunity to show students Excel’s MID function to pick out characters 5 and 6 from the high/low string and convert it to a numerical value.
At this point, I ask the students which date was the hottest and which was the coldest. Several use Excel’s MAX and MIN functions to find the date with the highest high temperature and lowest low temperature. Some average the high temperature and low temperature for each day and base their answer on the highest and lowest of the averages.
I then suggest that perhaps the hottest day is the day with the highest low (maximin) temperature because it is most difficult to sleep on those nights (without AC) and that the coldest day is the one with the lowest high (minimax) temperature because it is the worst day to go swimming. I also show them how to use Conditional Formatting to identify the highest and lowest temperatures in columns D and E as shown to the left.

Finally, I have the students graph (not shown) the temperatures in these two columns. It gives me the opportunity to show that it can be valuable to modify the minimum and the major units on the y-axis to make it easier to find the highs and lows.

I really like using an exercise that gives me the opportunity to display a maximin and minimax explanation and to show the students some Excel functions and features.

Teaching Tip: Unlocking the Promise of Digital Assessment with MyOMLab

For many profs, student assessment is one of the most labor-intensive components of teaching a class. The work continues as the tests are scored, papers read, and comments shared. Performing authentic and meaningful student assessment takes time. Consequently, some instructors construct relatively few assessments for their courses.

Unfortunately, this practice limits our ability to reliably assess student learning. If a course grade is a mosaic, then each assessment is a tile. A mosaic with just a few tiles only presents a part of the picture. “We can improve the quality of our assessment mosaic by increasing the number of performances we assess,” writes Faculty Focus (Oct. 30, 2017). These smaller and more frequently administered snapshots of student learning are called “formative assessments.” The integration of frequent formative assessments improves the validity of course assessment and has been demonstrated to have a variety of benefits, including improving student achievement and helping students develop more agency over their own learning.

Our MyOMLab assessment tool allows for automatic grade responses to algorithmic homework and test questions, to multiple choice questions, and to video and OM in the News questions. In addition to simplifying formative assessment, the use of this tool has been shown to amplify student engagement. Tech-enhanced formative assessments produce actionable data that can help students learn more efficiently. (MyOMLab also automatically calculates means and medians for every assignment and exam, and, in fact, metrics for every question are summarized, including number who attempted it, number correct, number with partial credit, number incorrect, and average time spent. Plus, that information can be retained in the MyOMLab system for several years as long as the course hasn’t expired yet).

Over 60% of our text adopters have implemented MyOMLab into their OM courses. It’s easy to do (learning takes less than an hour) and Pearson’s reps are always available for one-on-one training. Here is a link to locate your local Pearson representative:  http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/replocator/.