online teaching – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

Teaching Tip: Unleashing the Power of Active OM Learning

The key to educational success in online OM education lies in the integration of active learning strategies, writes Faculty Focus (Aug. 9, 2023). Consider the following recommendations to better engage students in online or hybrid learning environments:

Collaborative tools such as virtual whiteboards and group projects. Whiteboards enable students to brainstorm ideas and collaborate to solve problems, draw diagrams, and illustrate operations processes. Group projects serve as powerful vehicles for promoting collaboration and teamwork skills. Groups allow them to engage in shared decision-making, divide tasks, and collaborate on a common OM project.

Interactive activities. We have many interactive activities in our text that can help keep students engaged and motivated in online learning. Take our five MyLab simulations (details how to use them in this 9 minute video): inventory (Ch. 12), quality (Ch. 6), project management (Ch. 3), forecasting (Ch. 4), and supply chains (Ch. 11). Students can manipulate variables, observe outcomes, and analyze data, all within a controlled digital environment. Simulations are particularly beneficial for OM decisions, allowing students to gain hands-on experience and develop critical thinking skills.

Quizzing tools are effective in reinforcing key concepts and assessing student understanding. You can create online quizzes with multiple-choice, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank questions using platforms such as Kahoot!, Quizizz, or Google Forms. These tools often offer features like timed quizzes, leaderboards, and instant feedback, creating a gamified experience that motivates students to actively participate and strive for improvement.

Feedback mechanisms play a crucial role in the learning process. Our MyLab homework system provides instant feedback on whether a student’s answer is correct or incorrect, along with an explanation or hints to guide their understanding.

Opportunities for reflection. Reflection is an important part of active learning, as it allows students to think critically about what they’ve learned and how they can apply it. Writing assignments provide a platform for students to express their ideas and insights. For instance, after completing an OM in the News reading or watching a lecture, students can be assigned reflective essays where they critically analyze the content, connect it to real-world examples, and express their own perspectives.

Multimedia content. Our 50+ company video case studies can be used to engage students and help them visualize real-world concepts. These videos not only make the content more relatable and engaging but also enable students to observe that which cannot be shown in a classroom setting.

By using these tools, we think you can create a dynamic and engaging online learning environment for your students.

Teaching Tip: Assessing Your OM Students and Academic Integrity

Academic integrity has long been a necessary consideration for educators, but last year’s abrupt move to online learning intensified questions about just how much students may take advantage of outside help. Whether in person or online, then, what can you do to minimize cheating in the first place? As we near the end of the year, here are some ways you can adjust your assessment approach to better support students and give them the confidence to succeed.

While there will always be a few students who plan to cheat no matter what, many students are driven to do so by fear. So the solution is not to amp up your cheating-detection skills. Instead, Harvard Business Publishing (Dec. 6. 2021) suggests that educators can reduce students’ inclination to cheat in the first place by better engaging them in class and giving them more opportunities to confidently showcase their knowledge. Here are some strategies OM profs can use to reduce academic dishonesty and assess student learning more effectively.

Four ways to adjust exams to discourage cheating:

Give students more assessment opportunities throughout the semester by breaking up larger exams into smaller unit-, chapter-, or topic-specific tests.
Use the Heizer/Render/Munson bank of 2,000+ test questions (and some 400 are algorithmic) and mix them up on your exams—if each student receives a different set of questions, it will be harder to share answers.
Use problems or questions that ask students to explain, analyze, and infer—to prompt unique responses.
Use some of the 850 problems from MyOMLab instead of multiple-choice testing.

Three tips for boosting test-taking confidence:

Provide practice questions so students can learn what their strengths and weaknesses are before the pressure of a real exam.
Help students monitor their own progress by using low-stakes quizzes, or one-minute paper questions immediately following the introduction of new material to give them the practice they need to retrieve and rehearse information.
Offer students the opportunity to self-correct their answers after a quiz rather than directly giving them immediate feedback. This sets the tone that quizzes are learning opportunities.

Our goal is to prepare students to demonstrate and retain knowledge through exams, not heighten their anxiety or increase their proclivity to cheat. So it’s important to consider the purpose that each question serves toward the course objectives. Exams should help students fully understand concepts and analyze ideas on their own.

Guest Post: Online vs. Face-to-Face OM in Fall

Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Lynn A. Fish, who is Professor of Management in the School of Business at Canisius College

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The pandemic has led higher education to use online education more. It’s important for instructors to understand and develop student expectations for our classes and modes of teaching. With the change to online classes, do instructors and students have the same perceptions of online versus face-to-face education?

Forthcoming research completed at an AACSB Jesuit, Catholic University with a strong focus on teaching face-to-face classes revealed that during the pandemic with instruction mainly online, instructors and students still prefer face-to face instruction on most individual factors (specific to the student or instructor) and program factors (decisions that the instructor makes in developing the course) studied.

However, the instructor and business student perspectives differ on many factors. In general, both groups are more positive toward face-to-face education. Contrastingly, instructors and students who have not experienced online were very homogenous in their perspectives on all factors. In post-pandemic education, as instructors we need to address student expectations versus our own and use online components that may complement our classrooms in ways that we may not have understood prior to the pandemic. For example, in my operations management classes during the pandemic, over 80% of students rated the MyOMLab homework experience positively. Students are interested in keeping the pandemic instructor-developed video lectures available for review. However, they are frustrated with online testing and wish to return to traditional pencil-and-paper.

Future course offering will adjust accordingly to meet their expectations. However, not all institutions are the same and the key is to understand and manage these expectations at your institution after the pandemic. As instructors, it’s important to define and meet student perceptions as we enter the post-pandemic education world.

Teaching Tip: Online OM

As an OM instructor, you teach complex concepts. And you’re maintaining situational awareness of a classroom of dozens, if not hundreds, of students. (As of last year, you’re trying to do all of this through a tiny Zoom screen). That’s a lot to handle. Teaching OM class synchronously means you carry an extraneous load including the following:

Remembering students’ names and calling patterns
Reading online chat windows
Keeping track of time
Maintaining eye contact and body language

The key is to focus on what’s intrinsically valuable, writes the Harvard Business School Faculty Lounge (May 11, 2021). Here are some tips for how to do that:

online

Before Class

Create a teaching plan with an adequate level of detail. Give yourself as much structure as you need to feel comfortable, knowing there’s something you can refer to if you do get sidetracked
Develop and sort call lists ahead of time. Come to class with a general sense of which students you’re going to call on.
Clear your workspace of distraction. Even small distractions can really affect your ability to pay attention.
- Ensure a clock is visible; Have a pen and notepad ready; Eliminate background noise; Fix sightline distractions, such as a computer light
Block 15–30 minutes before class. Take this time to review your teaching plan, remember where you are in the syllabus, and just generally focus on the class ahead of you.

During Class

Ask clear, concise questions. If your students aren’t clear on what you’re asking, then you will end up expending time on the confusion rather than on the topic.
Encourage follow-up questions. Challenge and build on student comments, and have your students do the same.
Accept cognitive “gifts”—unprompted, unexpected insights from students that help tie together the lesson.
Acknowledge when you’re feeling overloaded. There will be times when your working memory runs out and you need to stop and process.. For example, say, “I want to put you in groups. I just need a minute to think about how to structure them productively.

Finally, learn to let go of perfection. Have empathy for yourself. Just do the best you can with where you are in the moment.

Teaching Tip: Must-Dos Before Teaching Your Next Online OM Class

While new campus lockdowns and delayed school openings haven’t marked an ideal start to the year, they have reinforced what we likely all knew: online teaching is here to stay. As you reconnect your webcam and ready yourself for the upcoming months of teaching to faces in Zoom boxes, Jay, Chuck, and I want to share an online teaching framework and helpful tips from Harvard B School’s Faculty Lounge (Jan. 18, 2021) called REMOTE. It stands for Reactions, Eye contact, Manageable, Organized, Thoughtful, and Engagement —all critical facets of ensuring a successful online class.

Reactions: Encourage students to use facial expressions or gestures to indicate whether they agree or disagree with what is being said in class. If students can’t access their video, they can use chat functions, polls, or emojis to share their reactions.

Eye Contact: Prioritize personal connections. Have the video of the student who is speaking right in front of you. That way, students feel like you’re looking and talking right to them.

Manageable: Keep your setup simple and practice, practice, practice. Do what makes you best able to credibly deliver the value that you are used to delivering.

Organized: Plan for less and be prepared. Have everything nearby, all queued up and ready to go before class: the specific agenda for the class, any materials—slides, polls, etc.—that you want to use, and a list of students you plan to call on.

Thoughtful: Be considerate of your students’ needs. Online, we need to be more thoughtful about every action we take and how our students are experiencing it.

Engagement: Keep things exciting—but don’t overdo it. Be sure to mix things up. You don’t need fancy pyrotechnics in every single session, and you don’t need to fill every moment of an online course with something new and exciting. For example, one day you might use a PowerPoint slide as your online board and the next day you may use an iPad or a flipchart because you plan to sketch a more complex idea.

Teaching Tip: Reaching Your On-Line Students

Teaching online well is harder than teaching face to face. For some of you, it has meant learning new systems. For others, it has meant redesigning how we will engage the OM material. We are all challenged to find new ways of connecting with and keeping students engaged.

Students are struggling with the same mechanics we are; managing their workload in a new environment. Some of our students are feeling adrift. They have been struggling with the perception that their classes are now just independent studies, that some teachers have ceased teaching, and that we don’t care about them. This perception challenge is real. Here are a few suggestions borrowed from colleagues around the country:

Ask Your Students What is Working We are using different formats for connecting with and engaging our students: MyOMLab, discussion forums, group activities, zoom, videos, email discussions, etc. Some of these work well for some classes and not so well with others. Ask your students how the different formats are working.

Engaging Students and Providing Brief but Frequent Communication Some profs have their students interact with class members or the whole class and make a point to communicate with them daily. If students fail to participate, you can reach out to them to find out what is going on. Ask how they are doing and if they need some help navigating the material. If they know that their participation is being noticed and matters, they will make more effort.

Creatively Connect with Students Have you tried offering zoom office hours or designating some time in zoom classes for social interaction. Or you can use lower tech versions following up with students via email and phone conversations. Students are losing out on all the positive social interaction they usually have with us in and out of class. Contact during social isolation is good for them and us too.

Teaching Tip: Going On-Line with Your OM Course this Week

Jay, Chuck, and I put our 100+ years of teaching experience together to try to help as we all begin this transition to a coronavirus semester. If you are not using MyOMLab yet, we strongly encourage you to sign your students up (90 day free period if you are using our Heizer/Render/Munson texts). More ideas will follow this week.

Teaching online is not the same as teaching face to face. Be proactive with communication, schedules, and assignments.
Accept that your course will not be exactly as you planned….. and adjust.
Details we assume in the classroom become important with remote students: Maintain context; identify the question, the problem, the post, include the date and time.
Consider how your course material might best be captured: assigned readings, written out mini lectures, screen captures, short videos, etc.
Videos: If you make and post a video, shoot for 6 minutes or less. Or instead consider using the videos that come with our text (46 company video case studies, 90+ Solved Problem videos, 12 recent grad videos about OM careers). It’s also possible to have students post their own videos, either recorded through Panopto or even their own phones. This allows for mini-presentations that other students could comment on.
Don’t reinvent the wheel: Use existing resources that come with the text; Power points, videos, existing problems, etc.
Participation: There are multiple ways of encouraging participation online: skype; face time; group work through discussion forums; Zoom video conference.
Make a schedule … your schedule and the student’s schedule. Be specific about deadlines. be clear about content and time expectations for their posts to each other in discussion forums. Let students know how they can raise questions and when you will be responding. Any online synchronous activities should be scheduled at the same time that the live class had been meeting prior to moving to distance.
Hybrid approach You might try recorded lectures for more quantitative content but still have the class meet through Zoom, say, once per week for more discussion-based topics. Zoom’s screen share feature works quite well during a live class. Students primarily focus on the instructor’s computer screen with a small video of the instructor in the corner. And it’s easy to switch from a Power Point slide to Excel to showing a video, etc.
Communications: Remember, the students may be new to this too, so continuing communication is important. Check your email more often than usual. Students may be asking questions at any time of day.

Guest Post: Being an Understanding Professor Under Extreme Circumstances

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

Nearly 50 years ago there was a nationwide student strike due to the shooting deaths of 4 students at Kent State University, with over 450 campuses shut down. The similarities between May, 1970 and today are striking. I was a student in 1970 and what I remember most is that all of my professors understood the circumstances and tried to accommodate students while maintaining as much academic rigor as possible.

The transition today from face-to-face classes to online classes is a difficult process. In addition, many students have been displaced and may not have reliable high-speed internet access at their new location. Some will not be familiar with web conferencing technology such as WebEx or Zoom.

Assignments An obvious way to reduce student apprehension is to extend the deadline on written assignments. Students can submit Word documents through email and you can grade them using Word’s Review tab. If you have been collecting homework problems in class from your students then it is an easy change to have MyOMLab grade the homework. (Pearson has just made the MyOMLab available free for 90 days to all Heizer/Render/Munson adopters). If you usually have students solve problems by hand, consider allowing them to use the text’s free problem-solving software such as Excel OM or POM.

Exams If you have been giving exams that you have written yourself, consider instead using MyLab. The distribution of the exam would be simple and the randomness in the question order and the random numbers in the questions help mitigate students cheating.

Classroom discussions are much different than discussions using a Discussion Board. It is very easy for student replies to overrun the Discussion Board and for students to ignore other students’ responses. Control of the responses is of extreme importance. In addition, students may expect you to be monitoring the Discussion Board 24/7.

Lessons It would be useful for every professor to develop and teach an online course in order to be prepared in the event of any situation, ranging from a minor interruption to the current emergency. The main lesson though is that students and faculty all need to be understanding and compassionate during this troubling time.

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.

Guest Post: Have You Assigned Students the MyOMLab Simulations?

Our Guest Post comes from Wende Huehn-Brown, who is Professor of Supply Chain Management at St. Petersburg College in Florida.

Previous posts on this blog site have focused on use of Heizer/Render/Munson’s five MyOMLab simulations in physical classroom situations. I am constantly trying to adapt what I do in my face-to-face classes for my entirely online students. This semester I piloted using these simulations for an alternative submission– 50% of the students chose to complete them.

My first concern: Will my students have the same ‘get it’ perspective Dr. Amy Peterson shared in her post on this blog? Some of my online students get overwhelmed with Pearson MyLabs, while other students enjoy the flexible learning environment as they juggle school around the rest of their busy lives. But if new technology is confusing or unreliable it can be a road block to their success. So I waited to adopt the simulations until I could see how they perform.

In our online classes we have built a set of pencasts and tutorials for each week’s lesson to substitute for physical classroom learning opportunities. (See my prior Guest Post.) We continue to grow various learning resources and hold our student success rates steady. Initially, there was apprehension to adopt these simulations over fears of increasing the workload on our students.

Student feedback said the simulations were the most exciting part of the class! They perceived them practical as they could relate to the scenarios and felt the knowledge and skill was applicable in the real-world and to help them grow their careers. Several participants suggested this alternative should become a required assignment as it pushed them to a higher level of critical thinking. I will provide specific feedback on each of the five simulations in the coming months!

Guest Post: Four Ways to Make Your Online OM Classroom More Interactive

Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Amy Peterson, who is Senior VP of course design, development and academic research at Pearson, which publishes our OM texts.

The convenience and flexibility of the online learning environment allows learners to develop new skills and further their education, regardless of where they live. However, it can sometimes feel isolating for students and faculty.The question is: how do you build a sense of community in your online OM course? Here are 4 practical tips:

1. Integrate real-time interaction There is often limited interaction between you and your students and class members with each other. Consider how impromptu conversations outside the traditional classroom forge relationships, clarify ideas, and spark new insights. Try setting up webconferencing opportunities for class members to meet online synchronously both formally and informally.

2. Get creative with discussion boards In an online environment, you can structure your discussions so that everyone contributes, plus they’ll have more time to consider what they want to say before responding. In a larger class, you can set up smaller discussion groups of 20 so that students can get to know their fellow classmates. You can also create even smaller groups (5-7 people) for more intimate interaction.

3. Maximize engagement with non-task interaction Non-task interactions are those exchanges that are not part of the direct learning, but help create a supportive learning community. You can facilitate these types of interactions by leveraging the social networking capabilities that are available in many LMSs, such as chat and webconferencing.

4. Use multiple communication tools In addition to external social networking tools, such as Facebook, Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp, students can meet each other in real time on Skype and Google Hangouts. Preprogrammed communication, such as introductory videos (like the ones created for the Heizer/Render/Munson text), content presentation, and email, are still important components of online learning, but student interaction can take the learning further, faster.

Teaching Tip: Group Projects in Your Online OM Course

As you introduce the group project to the students in your new online course, you can hear their screams through your PC! Why? Why? There are several reasons you did so: Students will have an opportunity to develop team skills, improve communication skills, and leverage their own personal interests and experiences to contribute.

But group projects may also cause both students and instructors additional work due to the issues that may arise during the course of the project. Issues often involve questions and concerns around grading, equal distribution of work, communication pitfalls, and managing expectations. Here are 5 guidelines for smoothly running the online group project that are recommended by Faculty Focus (April 20, 2015):

1. Define the Project – The project should be integrated into the course objectives and not be viewed as an extra assignment or busy work.

2. Establish Milestones – The project should include specific milestones during the course. For example, require an outline, a project scope, a requirements document, and other pertinent deliverables.

3. Use your Learning Management System (LMS) – You can offer private group discussion areas, chat areas, and other collaboration tools that will encourage both communication and participation. You can choose to monitor these as well if needed.

4. Simplify and Clarify Grading – You need to establish clear grading expectations for the group project. You may choose to grade each participant separately or, preferably, provide one grade for each project deliverable and apply that grade to all participants.

5. Provide Encouragement – Encourage and communicate the specific details of the project, and encourage each member of the group to utilize his/her strengths. Ask each group to submit an outline or summary for approval as well.

Teaching Tip: On-Line Courses in Operations–Some Basic Questions

“The debate about whether online courses are a good idea continues,” writes Faculty Focus (March 15, 2015). Who’s right or wrong is overshadowed by what the flexibility and convenience of online education has offered institutions and students. Those features opened the door, and online learning has come inside and is making itself at home in most of our colleges. Online learning and face-to-face instruction are routinely compared. Face-to-face instruction has features that online learning can’t have, but then online learning has advantages not possible in face-to-face instruction. Here are 3 basic questions worth considering:

What courses should be offered in the online format? Whatever the students want and will take online has become the default answer. Operations Management does seem to be working well at many large (and small) colleges. MyOMLab is perfectly suited to on-line study as it has numerous self-help ways of tackling homework problems. Videos and readings are built into the software, as well as assessment tools that let students advance when they are prepared.

Who should be teaching online courses? What instructional strengths and weaknesses make a faculty a good choice for online courses? First, faculty who realize the importance of instructional design, or who have access to professionals who do. Online courses need strong coherent structures. They must stand on their own more than face-to-face courses. Course materials matter more in an online environment. Online teachers should have the ability to convey their presence and create a sense of community without being physically present. And good written communication skills are more important than oral ones in online environments.

Who should be taking online courses? The most successful online learners are typically adults who are self-directed learners. That makes online courses a much riskier proposition for beginning students who don’t have clear educational goals and possess marginal abilities as learners. We can’t prevent students from taking online courses, but we need to tell them what skills they need to succeed in those courses.

Teaching Tip: The Importance of Feedback in Your OM Course

Research overwhelmingly shows that students pay attention and respond to grades, writes Faculty Focus (June 20, 2014). They guide their time, their attention, and their effort based on the grades they are getting. Thus, grading and feedback can be effective tools for focusing students’ attention. For this to work, however, grading must be aligned with learning objectives, and feedback must move students toward those learning objectives. Also imperative is that grading and feedback are consistent, timely, immediate, ongoing, and incremental.
Feedback is a tool that develops cognitive understanding, motivation and engagement. It not only helps students learn course material but also helps keep them motivated, engaged in what can feel like an isolated environment, and connected to the course. All told, feedback has a direct bearing on whether students have meaningful interactions with course materials and overall positive course experiences. Because feedback can be such a powerful tool, we are big believers in the MyOMLab on-line assessment system that accompanies our text.

The issue is that instructors don’t have the time to provide the kind of handwritten feedback they would like to deliver. With one teacher and 20, 50, or more students per course, it can be daunting and even impossible to fulfill feedback best practices. In any given week, instructors face an exponential buildup of student artifacts that demand time and attention. It is an overwhelming challenge to maintain a desirable level and quality of grading feedback without overinvesting, which can lead to instructor burnout. It is important to note that the goal is not to improve feedback by spending more time on it. Rather, the goal is to optimize time spent on feedback so that instructors can invest an appropriate amount of effort and get high-quality results.

Our strategy is to embrace emergent technologies of automated assessment systems like MyOMLab. Technology can automate some repetitive feedback tasks to improve efficiency without diminishing quality.

Teaching Tip: Bite Sized Operations Management Lectures

A recent article about MOOCs, by the American Society of Engineering Education, has interesting implications for those of us interested in flipped teaching or teaching with technology, two big trends in higher education. The 1st conclusion is that teaching MOOCs is not at all like lecturing, even when literally delivering lectures online. Recording a 50 minute lecture for a MOOC will make for an unpopular online course. Teaching to the iPhone generation means that short segments of 6-9 minutes are mandated.

To teach to a diverse audience, “it’s good to have bite-sized content,” advises a Georgia Tech prof who has distilled his topics into short modules and “edu-bytes” of no more than 10 minutes. A Cal-Berkeley prof has reorganized his 90-minute lecture into 8-to-12-minute video segments, or “lecturelets”, each covering a topic with 1-2 self-check questions. Evidence from the field suggests shorter is sweeter. New data from edX, a nonprofit MOOC provider created by MIT and Harvard, for instance, put the optimal length for lecturelets at 6 to 9 minutes. Median viewing time, where half the students watch the entire clip, peaks at 6 minutes, then falls rapidly.

MOOCs require “a huge amount of work,” adds a UC Davis prof who devotes two full days preparing each 60-to 90-minute lecture. To maximize his instruction time, he writes 8 pages covering not only exactly what he will say, including jokes, but what he will draw. It takes 8 hours to record the lecture, stopping, starting, and rewriting as necessary. The editing crew needs 32 hours to synchronize the audio, screen casts, and video into a complete lecture. It takes 5 to 10 hours to produce each hourlong lecture video.

We are all well aware of the need to spark up our lectures, be they in a small class, a lecture hall, or on-line. Jay and I believe our 35 short company videos and many of the exercises we note in this blog (look back to the scores of Teaching Tips posts over the past 3 years) may help create an exciting classroom atmosphere.