Tag: blended teaching

Guest Post: Teaching OM to 2,500 Students a Year at UCF

Dr. Andy Johnson is a Lecturer in Supply Chain Management at the University of Central Florida, the largest single campus college in the U.S. with over 66,000 students. He holds a PhD from the Rutgers Business School.

The University of Central Florida’s (UCF) College of Business Administration has undergone a dramatic change in teaching it’s 13 core and non-core courses to over 8,500 students each semester. In the Fall of 2017, the college developed a unique way of engaging a large student body using a variant of the mixed-mode method called “Reduced Seat Time, Active Learning”. This is a blended method combining face-to-face and online requirements. The intent of the five face-to-face sessions is to provide a group type activity verifying learning for a particular course subject.

In the Spring of 2018, I taught six sections of the Supply Chain and Operations Management course using the Heizer/Render/Munson text to 647 students using the newly adopted modality. Students received the course content in a series of short online videos (138 in total) that I created, with deadlines for each chapter’s MyOMLab homework sets, quizzes, study modules and simulation programs. For the 5 classroom sessions, I developed scenarios similar to the computer simulations using printed exercises and Microsoft Excel worksheets. Upon completion of the group activities, the material provided in these sessions could then be used to help prepare the students to pass the 5 simulations in Forecasting, Inventory Management, Quality Management, Supply Chain Management, and Project Management provided by the text authors and Pearson.

Overall, my experience teaching this large student body for the first time, in this newly developed modality, was a success, but of course not without some challenges. However, there were two significant benefits using this new course design: 1) the face-to-face live sessions solidified learning in what I deem as the 5 pillars of supply chain and operations management and 2) having the opportunity to individually engage with over 600 students. I believe the college exceeded its expectations of the new format and will be a benchmark for other universities with a large student body.

Guest Post: Comparing Blended vs. On-Line OM Classes at St. Petersburg College

Wende BrownOur Guest Post comes from Wende Huehn-Brown, who is Professor of Business at St. Petersburg College in Florida.

Last year I shared some of my experiences and efforts to increase student success in online courses for operations management at Jay and Barry’s OM Blog. At my college, we define student success as the portion of students earning a C or better as their final grade. Here are the past 3 years of data:

Modality Spring 2013 Spring 2014 Spring 2015
Online 57% 73% 78%
Blended 92% 88% 75%

 

Overall we have sustained further improvements in online student success. The same pencasts have been used (see example in this 2013 Guest Post) since Spring 2014 (unfortunately my smartpen died, but I just obtained a new one to work on adding pencasts).  Several updates have occurred in the screen captured videos.  These improvements added and updated some problems, but more importantly were uploaded to YouTube so students can access from mobile devices and all videos were closed captioned to be ADA compliant.

While blended student success rates remain strong, we have seen a decrease. Basically, more students are attempting online classes, then moving to blended courses if unsuccessful online.  Enrollment has actually grown almost 50% over this three year time period (the college doubled the number of sections offered both online and blended).  Some weaker students appear to be recognizing their learning need to take tougher quantitative business classes in a blended format. Yet other students find recorded learning objects an effective supplement to the textbook and MyOMLab to further support online learning. Pencasts and videos were only used in a tailored study plan. Students are expected to practice in the study plan first and then critically think further about applying the analytical methods in other graded homework, quizzes or exams, or projects (which do not have these recorded resources).

Teaching Tip: To Lecture or Not to Lecture in Your OM Class

 prof lecturing“There are purists among us who would say that we should never lecture,” writes Prof. Maryellen Weimer in Faculty Focus (Oct. 1, 2014). But as faculty, we bring expertise to learners–and having an expert around when you don’t know something can be very helpful. Do most teachers still talk too much? “They do,” says Weimer.  Are lectures fraught with well-established impediments to learning? “They are,” she adds.

Are some kinds of content better explained by the instructor than discovered by the students? Is it complex content, like computing an X-bar chart or an R-squared value, that you know from previous experience often causes students to struggle? Can your explanation lay the foundation and set the parameters so that students can start dealing with content from a place that expedites understanding? Is a lecture the best way to clarify what students find confusing?

Should we use lectures when students don’t seem to care about the content, don’t think it’s interesting, or don’t think there’s any need to know it? A lecture where you imbue the content with spicy facts, intriguing questions, colorful business anecdotes, and relevant details can cultivate student interest. Teachers talking about how they connect to and with operations management, why they love it, and why they think everyone else ought to also can be very motivational.

Many faculty now agree that we shouldn’t use lecture as the default instructional method. But we need to decide when lecturing makes sense so that it’s a conscious, purposeful choice. Then there’s the matter of length for any given segment of your talk: perhaps mini-lectures, not lengthy expositions that take all or most of a class session. I have found that a 10-minute video, a short class exercise, or a breakout to analyze a one-page case makes the lecture portion of the class easier on both prof and student. Your thoughts?

Guest Post: Teaching Operations Management On-line at St. Petersburg College

Wende BrownDr. Wende Huehn-Brown is Professor of Business at St. Petersburg College in Florida

Last year I was a guest on Jay and Barry’s OM Blog who shared some tips from my experiences teaching operations management from the Heizer/Render text in on-line courses. Now, a year later, I wanted follow up this discussion with further evidence on the value that pencasts (my Guest Post on January 12, 2013) and screen captured videos (my Guest Post on July 2, 2013) had on student success rates.

To emphasize the impact that these visual and recorded methods had on my students, let me share my student success rates this year in comparison with last year. Student successes are defined here as the portion of students earning a C or better as their final grade.  Please understand as you consider these percentages, I do have a fairly large withdrawal rate in online courses and students that withdraw are in the denominator.

Modality Spring 2013 Spring 2014
Online 56.5% 73.1%
Blended 92.0% 88.0%

Obviously, the value of physical meetings to explain concepts and demonstrate the analytics in the active learning activities I do in blended classes is very vital to student success. However, technology today does enable us to replicate some aspects from the classroom.   Since 2013, my use of these recorded media options in my Operations Management course has grown to a total well over 100 pencasts and videos. I am able to reuse these across courses and I focus on study plan problems that are not used on further graded homework, quizzes, or exams.  At the same time, student evaluations have become more positive on the course.