Tag: Phillip Flamm

Guest Blog: Effects of Technology Use on Collaborative Learning Results

Our Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches Operations Management in the ISQS department at Texas Tech University. This is his 9th posting on our OM blog.

The Rawls College of Business here at Texas Tech U. has recently added a “technology room.” This room has 9 rectangular tables and will seat teams of 5. Each table has a large monitor at the head of the table. At the front of the room is a podium with a large screen monitor behind it. Having plugged in their laptops to the room’s web site, team members have several options:

  • View the master podium screen on the table’s large monitor
  • View the laptop screen of one of the team members
  • View specific documents

Team members interact as follows:

  • Team members take very comprehensive notes in class (lecture is structured with accompanying power point slides)
  • Team posts one member’s notes from the most recent lecture on the table monitor
  • Members go around the table in order discussing the notes they have for each power point slide
  • Extended discussion may result if there are questions about the content (each member offers their individual understanding of the concepts)
  • Member with their notes on the monitor makes changes or additions based on a clearer understanding of the material (all members can see changes as they are made)
  • After reviewing the most recent lecture they move on to the next most recent, etc., until all lectures (for the next exam) are covered
  • Every lecture is covered every time the team meets (past lecture notes generally go faster than the most recent)
  • The posting member distributes a copy of the updated, more descriptive notes at the conclusion of the meeting

Team members experience faster learning rates, increased retention, and better understanding of quantitative material. To exhibit these advantages the team members’ average exam was 15 points higher than the other 380 course students on exams this semester.

Guest Post: Total Team Collaborative Learning of OM in Spain

flammOur Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches OM in the ISQS Department at Texas Tech University

I have recently returned from teaching operations management this past summer in Texas Tech’s Study Abroad Program in Spain. I divided my 24 students into 8 teams of 3 each with these provisos:

  • Each member of the team will get the same final grade for 80% of the class so they will be forced to help each other
  • Grades will be based on 2 exams (taken as a team), 2 or 3 team presentations, and a peer grade (from team members plus an attitude grade from me)
  • One presentation will be a tutorial of quantitative material
  • The second presentation will be the team solution of an OM case scenario

As part of the class, I also arranged tours of 2 manufacturing plants.

Students studying abroad normally want to talk about what they did and saw while traveling. The teams involved in Total Team Collaborative Learning only wanted to talk about how much they learned and how much they retained. The students truly enjoyed the OM class and the lowest group exam grade was 88/100. (I give the exact same tests during Fall and Spring back in Texas and the average is 64.) This seems to suggest that the teams learned faster, and retained more.

In the Summer Study Abroad 2014, we increased from 15 to 24 students over the prior year, with the final grades staying the same. We:

  • Utilized special power point pages with 3 slides per page, with lines for notes; teams reviewed notes together following lectures to clean up any questions they might have
  • Worked daily quizzes together for a team grade
  • Prepared quantitative teaching sessions 3 times during the month long class
  • Worked homework problems together for a team grade

Guest Post: Different Approaches for Engaging Students in a Study Abroad Class Setting

flammOur Guest Post comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches OM in the ISQS Department at Texas Tech University.

Students in the Texas Tech University Study Abroad program face a few difficult challenges in their Operations Management course every summer. In addition to enduring a 3 hour class period daily, they must stay focused on course work despite the following distractions: (1) Adjusting to different food, culture, etc.; (2) The attractive “night life”; and (3) Side trips 3 times a week that include lots of walking. In short, students who don’t maintain their focus will be dragging to class and struggling to stay awake. This setting is a recipe for disaster for the average 20-year-old.

In a previous Guest Post, I described one potential answer to this challenge: Total Team Collaborative Learning. The course guidelines:

  • Teams of 3,
  • Following each lecture, students review lecture notes to make sure all team members understand the material,
  • In addition, the teams go over all lecture material from each prior lecture. This means that they will go over specific lecture material several times prior to the exam,
  • Team members have a peer review grade,
  • Each team will prepare a short lecture on a particular quantitative method and “teach” the class this method,
  • Teams will take a quiz daily (as a team) from the previous day’s material,
  • All exams are taken as a team (these exams are the same as what I give during the regular semester where average grades are 63 to 65….the lowest team grade was 88/100).

Based a survey given at the end of the course this past summer, students indicated that they retained more in a shorter period of time and understood the material. In short, they loved the Total Team Collaborative environment and sharpened their team building skills in preparation for the time when they will be asked to work on a team with their new employer.

Guest Post: Approaches for Engaging OM Students in a Study Abroad Class

flammOur Guest Post (his 8th) comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches OM in the ISQS Department at Texas Tech University.

I have been selected to teach operations management this summer in the Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business Study Abroad Program in Spain. After recovering from the initial shock of logistical planning I began to think about what it would take to keep fifteen 20 year olds engaged for a month while they are facing the distraction of “things to do in a foreign country.” It occurred to me that the key to making this work is “keeping the students consistently engaged.” I came up with several ideas that might help to keep the students awake and productive in a small class setting:

  • Divide the students into teams of 3
  • Each member of the team will get the same final grade for 80% of the class so they will be forced to help each other
  • Grades will be based on 2 exams (taken as a team), 2 or 3 team presentations, and a peer grade (from team members plus an attitude grade from me)
  • One presentation will be a tutorial of quantitative material (basically teaching the class quantitative material)
  • The second presentation will be the team solution of an operations management case scenario

This seems to be an opportunity to create an atmosphere very nearly like the day-to-day business world. Every day workers create designs, solve problems, make decisions, prepare presentations, and receive rewards as teams. I am curious to see how the students will respond to dealing with problems that teams normally encounter when their grade depends upon how they handle themselves. The first day of class I will cover interpersonal skills topics to include conflict resolution and team building. Upon completion of this program I will enter an “after Spain” blog covering results. As part of the class, I have also arranged tours of 2 manufacturing plants.

Guest Post: Student Assessment with a Twist At Texas Tech…EIP (Effort Impact Points)

Our Guest Post today comes from Phillip Flamm, who teaches OM in the ISQS Department in the  Rawls College  of Business at Texas Tech University. This is his 7th Guest Post. Phillip can be reached at pflamm@ttu.edu.

I’ve often wondered exactly how learning and effort are connected. I know that good student effort usually leads to better grades, but up to this point I have only utilized personal response system “clickers” in my Operations Management class as a reward for effort. During the first summer session of 2012 I attempted to expand the boundaries of effort measurement by combining several factors as a reward system that would be based on student effort. Those factors are:

  1. Total number of lectures attended (measured by PRS responses)
  2. % improvement from Exam 1 to Exam 2
  3. Number of focus groups attended (a student led collaborative learning session held the day of each lecture)
  4. Seeking writing help from the campus Writing Center for the written version of the team project.

With the help of Jason Triche, a PhD student who is team teaching with me, we developed a 5 tiered reward scale based on an accumulation of effort points (EIP) earned for each activity. The reward system looks like this (800 total points for the course):

  • Tier 1: Range – 15 to 20 (EIP) receives a 3% addition to semester total (24 points)
  • Tier 2: Range – 12 to 14 (EIP) receives a 2%  ……………(16 points)
  • Tier 3: Range – 9 to 11 (EIP) receives a 1% ………………(8 points)
  • Tier 4: Range – 5 to 8 (EIP) receives a .50% …………… (4 points)
  • Tier 5: Range – 0 to 4 (EIP) receives 0%.

We have just begun to analyze the data but it appears that approximately 20% of the students receiving EIP actually moved up a letter grade as a result. So, it appears that their effort was rewarded with extra credit and higher exam scores.

Guest Post: How I Deal With the 1st Day of Class Syndrome at Texas Tech

Phillip Flamm, who is the Core Course Coordinator for OM at Texas Tech U., provides today’s Guest Post–his 6th for us.  Phillip teaches in the ISQS Department at the Rawls College of Business. He can be reached at p.flamm@ttu.edu.

It seems that large classes (>150) tend to have certain challenging characteristics no matter what the course. One of the most maddening issues is the impact of the student syndrome. In short, students feel less engaged in large classes and therefore sometimes start very slowly. I have incorporated several tactics that help motivate students to start course work immediately:

  • I pick a good student from past classes to speak briefly the first day. I leave the room so the class will expect an honest appraisal from the ex-student. They detail exactly what it takes to make a good grade in the course with an emphasis on getting started (purchasing the book, joining a focus group, time management calendar, etc.) immediately.
  • My course, Operations Management, is half lecture and half lab (semester long project requirement). I teach all the lectures and I have 7 or 8 lab instructors who teach 14 labs. The first day, lab instructors show recorded video descriptions of lab project requirements so each student will get the same idea of what is required. 
  • Also in the first day’s lecture I detail exactly what it takes to make a good grade:
    • Join a focus group (7 different times available) to verify their notes.
    • Utilize PRS clickers to answer extra credit questions.
    • Utilize custom notes pages in the back of the text book to record their personal lecture notes.
    • Point out poor grade statistics of students with no text book.
    • And what’s in it for them:
      • Develop skills that recruiters want (work well in teams, verbal and written presentations, developing a business plan)
      • Evidence that students have used their projects as successful talking points in interview situations to get a job.

It is impossible to motivate everyone to start fast, but hitting the students from several angles initially seems to help.

Guest Post: Using a Lab/Project Component in Our Texas Tech Summer OM Class

Phillip Flamm, who is the Core Course Coordinator for OM at Texas Tech U., provides today’s Guest Post–his 5th for us.  Phillip teaches in the ISQS Department at the Rawls College of Business. He can be reached at p.flamm@ttu.edu.

We have used a lab/lecture component successfully for our undergraduate  Introduction to Operations Management course at Texas Tech for several years. During the summer sessions we changed to a strictly lecture/exam format due to the brevity of the session (30 calendar days per session). There have been two negative consequences of the summer session approach: first, the students miss out on the lab portion (preparing a business plan for a start up manufacturing business) and secondly, some students have scheduled the class in the summer to avoid the lab component (enrollment had swelled to 200 total students each summer). This summer we attempted to rectify that situation with a little creative scheduling:

  • Combined 100 students into two sections, one for each summer session
  • Class met Monday-Friday for 1 hour and 50 minutes
  • I handled the lectures for 1 hour and 20 minutes daily
  • For the other 30 minutes I enlisted the help of a very talented PhD student (who had taught the lab portion before) to break the group into two 50 person sections (roughly 16 teams each)
  • During the lab portion teams prepared a slightly shorter version of the manufacturing start up business plan (presented in verbal and written form)
  • Projects were presented and graded the last four days of each session (I graded half the teams and the PhD student graded the other half during the same time slot)

The hybrid approach seemed to be a huge success. Summer school students received the great learning experience of preparing a business plan from an operations perspective and the students attempting to dodge the lab component got a difficult, but necessary life lesson. In addition, the PhD student was able to get a little wider range of teaching experiences (lecturing large sections, organizing/advising student teams, and grading presentations) than is normally available. It was a win/win for all!