Tag: teaching OM

MyLab Operations Management: Features You Will Want to Explore in Class–Part 1

Jay, Chuck, and I were just talking about how powerful our MyLab learning system has become over the past five years, when we figured out that even we had trouble listing ALL of the newer features! With over half of our OM text’s 500+ adopters now using the platform, its time to layout the options. So here is Part 1 (of 2):

Simulations: We have 5 gaming simulations: supply chain management (Ch.11); inventory management (Ch. 12); quality control (Ch. 6); forecasting (Ch. 4), and project management (shown on left, Ch.3).  They have turned out to be one of the most popular and powerful tools and are fully assignable through MyLab Operations Management. Students can complete them as homework or work on them as an in-class activity, individually or as part of a team. The simulations are real-world and easy to use.

OM in the News Feature: Each chapter has a new OM in the News reading (just like the ones provided in our blog). These short readings have links to the full article (in Businessweek, NYT, WSJ, etc.), along with 4 multiple choice questions you can assign to assure students have read the piece.

Company videos: Perhaps the most widely used feature is the series of forty-one 6-12 minute videos of companies we feature in the text. We created each of the videos to match exactly with chapter topics and feature companies that we hope students can relate to (Hard Rock, an NBA team, Frito-Lay, Alaska Airlines, and so on). You can show the videos in class or assign them, as each has 4 multiple choice questions in MyLab Operations Management.

Solved Problem Videos: Each of the 89 Solved Problems at chapter end has a 3-20 minute video we created to walk your students through the solution, step-by-step. We call them Virtual Office Hours.

Concept questions: To help ensure that students are reading the text material, we have created 4 multiple choice concept questions for each major heading in the book. You can assign a few for the topics you cover and use them to reinforce learning or as a pretest for the chapter.

 

 

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.

Guest Post: Free Your Classroom from Cell Phones

Today’s Guest Post comes from Dr. Albena Ivanova, who is Associate Professor of OM at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania.

Last semester I found this article on the APA website: https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/ptacc/no-mobile-phones.pdf

The professor, whose name is not listed in the paper, uses a positive reinforcement strategy to provide a disincentive for the students to use cell phones during class. He/she gives an opportunity for the students to earn bonus points if they leave their cell phones on the front desk for the entire class the entire semester.

I tried this technique in one of my classes this semester (see the photo with each student’s spot numbered) and it worked well. I surveyed the students at the end of the semester and 84% stated that they did not miss their cell phones during class, 84% did not feel anxious during class without cell phones, 84% did not feel disconnected from the world without cell phones, 68% stated they were able to focus better, and 68% said were able to take better notes.

I will definitely use this technique again in my future classes. However, if the class relies too heavy on computer use, then the computer itself becomes a distraction. That is why I would recommend using this technique only if the computer usage in class is minimal.

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: Teaching and Blogging Supply Chain and Operations at Niagara University

Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Victor Pimentel, who is Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Niagara University. Here he is with his OM students.

Students usually describe Operations classes as tedious, even frustrating. They have a hard time relating the material covered in class with the real world. That is why it is critical for me as a professor to find the right tools to not only engage my students, but to encourage them to pursue a career in the field.

Jay, Barry and Chuck’s OM Blog, has proven to be critical for my early success as a prof at Niagara University. The blog not only bridges the gap between theory and practice, but also encourages my students to read articles, which look at everyday events with a more analytical view.

As part of my class, I require my students to read one article per week, with the article relating to the topic at hand. Then every Friday we take fifteen minutes to discuss it and take a short quiz. The first couple of weeks, I was impressed with how much they enjoyed the readings, which not only clarified why we covered some of the material in class, but also little by little sparked interest in the field. My students have described the articles as “Quick and to the point,” “Interesting,” “Current” and my personal favorite “Understandable, not pretentious.”

The Blog has already affected my student’s tremendously. As an example, while one of my former students was being interview by a multinational bread company, he cited the “Self-Driving Truck Makes a Beer Run” article as an example of how supply chains evolve and how future supply chains will look. He emphasized how much he wanted to be in the front lines as an active participant of this revolution. To nobody’s surprise, he received not one but three job offers from different divisions.

Thanks Jay, Barry and Chuck for making my class so much more rewarding.

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/.

Guest Post: Teaching OM in the European Classroom

Dr. Steven Harrod is Associate Professor in the Department of Management Engineering at Technical University of Denmark.

Will this be on the exam?” In my decade of teaching OM in the U.S., this was by far the most frequent question from students. The typical American course is assessed on a running sum of credit for attendance, participation, written homework, midterm and progress exams, and a final exam, much like the bill after a stay at a Hilton resort.

Speaking from my experience in Denmark, the European evaluation process and value system is much different. One of the clearest ways I have experienced this is with Heizer/Render/Munson’s popular  MyOMLab system. In the U.S., MyOMLab was well received and many students actively worked homework assignments to accumulate grade points. Here in Denmark, the response was, “Just give us the questions and the answers, and we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

Students are definitely more independent here than in the U.S. Written exams, numerical or multiple choice, are limited to courses with more than 40 students. Since all of my courses are smaller, I have exclusively held oral exams. An oral exam typically offers the student the opportunity to set the topic of the exam. Very often the examiners are external, not participants in the course delivery, and brought in at exam time. The student has a very real chance to emphasize topics of strength and avoid topics of weakness, and is very much “in the driver’s seat.”

And the examiners often represent potential employers, which makes for a different student to job market relationship than in the U.S. Although students here desire recognition and good grades, there is a relaxed relationship between students and the job market that supports a more exploratory, investigative education. The typical course I teach here is a form of “mass customization.” The lesson plan often contains multiple streams of related concepts.

The learning environment in Europe offers some interesting opportunities for exploration and growth, but it is also dependent on the many structural and cultural elements of Europe.

Teaching Tip: What Makes for a Good Professor

In a newly published study (summarized in Faculty Focus, Aug 16, 2017), students were asked to prioritize the instructor qualities that consistently make a difference in how they learn. For those of us just starting a new academic year, it’s the whole list that merits review, self-appraisal and recommitment. The questions for instructors involve the extent to which their teaching demonstrates these characteristics and via what instructional behaviors, policies, and practices they are being communicated. Here are the characteristics, in random order:

• Assertive – the teacher has a strong personality, is independent, competitive, and forceful
• Responsive – the teacher has compassion, is helpful, sincere, friendly, and sensitive to student needs
• Clear – the teacher presents content in ways that students can understand, answers questions, has clear course objectives
• Relevant – the teacher uses examples, explanations, and exercises that make the course content relevant to students’ careers and personal goals
• Competent – the teacher is a content expert, intelligent, and knows how to teach
• Trustworthy – the teacher is honest, genuine, and abides by ethical standards
• Caring – the teacher cares about students, understands them, and has their best interests at heart
• Immediate – the teacher’s nonverbal behaviors are expressive; the teacher smiles, nods, uses gestures, makes eye contact, and doesn’t speak in a monotone
• Humorous – the teacher uses humor frequently
• Discloses – the teacher reveals an appropriate amount of personal information when it’s relevant to the topic

Teaching is sometimes described as a gift; some teachers are endowed with it and then there’s the rest of us. But most teachers who are good at what they do have worked hard to get that way and continue to improve and refine their teaching. They take their professional development seriously and believe they can always get better. Further, none of the characteristics on this list is something we were born with. All of them involve learned behaviors that can be demonstrated and communicated in different ways, and no teacher can do them all equally well.

Good OM Reading: Faster, Higher, Farther–The Volkswagen Scandal

Two years ago, Volkswagen proudly reached its goal of surpassing Toyota as the world’s largest automaker. But in Fall 2015, the EPA disclosed that VW had installed software in 11 million cars that deceived emissions-testing mechanisms. By early 2017, VW had settled with U.S. regulators and car owners for $22 billion, with additional lawsuits still looming. In Faster, Higher, Farther, New York Times reporter Jack Ewing details the conspiracy. He describes VW’s rise from “the people’s car” during the Nazi era to one of Germany’s most prestigious and important global brands, touted for being “green.” The first half of the book is the story of VW, the legendary creation of the Beetle by the Nazis, and the car’s role as a counterculture icon during the 1960s.

Ewing then portrays VW chairman Ferdinand Piëch and CEO Martin Winterkorn. The author argues that the corporate culture they fostered drove employees, working feverishly in pursuit of impossible sales targets, to illegal methods. Within a year of taking over, Winterkorn had announced a plan for VW to attain “world domination.” His diesel fuel and a “clean diesel” marketing campaign became vital components of this strategy. Although diesel leads to fuel efficiency, it also leads to high toxic emissions. Unable to build cars that could meet emissions standards honestly, engineers were left with no choice but to cheat. VW then compounded the fraud by spending millions marketing this clean diesel.

In 2013, the lie was first exposed by a handful of student researchers on a shoestring budget at West Virginia University who tested the fuel emissions of a diesel Passat, a diesel Jetta and a diesel BMW. The vehicles passed EPA standards when tested in a controlled lab-setting. But when the cars were tested in a non-lab setting, the Passat and Jetta exhibited nitrogen oxide emissions that were off the charts. As we know, this led eventually to the guilty plea to criminal charges in a landmark Department of Justice case.

In dealing with ethics of OM, here is a global company whose deceit half destroyed it–and the story is not finished.

Teaching Tip: The First Day of Your OM Class

There’s no discounting the importance of the first day of your OM class. What happens that day sets the tone for the rest of the course. Here are a few novel activities (see Faculty Focus—July 19, 2017) that emphasize the importance of learning and the responsibility students share for shaping the classroom environment.

Best and Worst Classes –  On one section of the blackboard you write: “The best class I’ve ever had” and underneath it “What the teacher did” and below that “What the students did.” On another section you write “The class from hell” and then the same two items beneath. Ask students to share their experiences, without naming the course or teacher, and begin filling in the grid based on what they call out. In 10 minutes, 2 very different class portraits emerge. Move to the best class section of the board and tell students that this is the class you want to teach, but that you can’t do it alone. Together you and your students have the power to make this one of those “best class” experiences.

First Day Graffiti – Flip charts with markers beneath are placed around the classroom. Each chart has a different sentence stem. Here are a few examples:

“I learn best in classes where the teacher ___”
“Students in courses help me learn when they ___”
“I am most likely to participate in classes when ___”
“Here’s something that makes it hard to learn in a course: ___”
“Here’s something that makes it easy to learn in a course: ___”

Students are invited to walk around the room and write responses. After there are comments on every flip chart, you walk to each one and talk a bit about 1-2 of the responses.

 Behaviors: Theirs and Ours – Put students in groups and have them respond to: “What are 5 five things faculty do that make it easy to learn?” Make a master list to share in class or online. Below the 5 things faculty do, you can also list the 5 things students do that make it hard or easy to teach.

Guest Post: Productivity, Forecasting and Excel with Real Data

Our Guest Post today comes from Howard Weiss, who is Professor of Operations Management at Temple University. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM for our text.

I often search the web for real data that I can use for forecasting, and just came across data from Lowes 10 – Year Financial Information report that can be used for both productivity and forecasting.

The report has 5 sections, with 2 that are of major interest to OM. The 1st is titled “Stores and People” and lists the productivity inputs and outputs of: (1)Number of stores; (2)Selling square feet; (3)Number of employees; (4)Total customer transactions; (5)Average ticket.

The next section includes the net sales. I have the students perform several exercises using these data. Here are 5 years of past data.

The Exercises

Exercise 1 – Data integrity:  For each of the years the net sales should be equal to the anticipated net sales (my definition) given by the average ticket multiplied by the number of transactions. Of course, the anticipated and reported net sales are not exactly equal. I ask the students to compute the percentage difference between the reported net sales and the anticipated net sales and also to determine the MAPE differences.

Exercise 2 – Productivity:  For each year, there are 3 productivity measures that can be computed comparing net sales to number of stores, selling square feet and number of employees. Unfortunately, there are no multipliers available to compute the multifactor productivity measures for the 10 years.

Exercise 3 – Productivity change: For all years except the first, I ask the students to compute the productivity change for each of the 3 productivity measures. There is one small issue the students need to recognize. The data is given as most recent first.

Exercise 4 –Graph in Excel: I ask the students to graph the 3 sets of productivity measures. If the students create scatter graphs using the dates in row 3 and the productivity measures that they create in a row below the data then the graph will be fine. If the students create a line graph using only the computed productivity measures then the graph will run backwards. That is, the time axis will be backwards. This is important for the final exercise.

Exercise 5 – Regression/Trend Line – I ask the students to draw a regression/trend line for each of the three measures. I have shown my students that right-clicking on the graph is the easiest way to create the line. I also ask the students to find the three average productivity changes based on the slope of the line in each of the three graphs.

The students very much appreciate applying Productivity to real data, using data that has more than 2 periods and having the opportunity to work in Excel, especially with the graphing capability and regression capability within the graph option.

Teaching Tip: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard?

I just came across an interesting research article in the journal Psychological Science that may benefit you and your students. For over two decades, I have wondered just how much attention my operations management students were paying to me during class.

Laptops have been mandatory in Rollins’ MBA classes since 1993. Students were expected to use them for note taking, for Excel exercises, for Powerpoint presentations, and for on-line exams. Were students doing email, were they ordering on Amazon, were they playing poker, Freecell, or Words with Friends? Or, hopefully, were they were taking notes?

For sure, taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. But according to this article, researchers are now suggesting that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies had primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. This research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, the authors found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. Their paper shows that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.

Your own observations and thoughts? Feel free to comment!

Source: Mueller, P., & Oppenheimer, D. The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard. Psychological Science, 25 (6), 1159-1168 DOI: 10.1177/0956797614524581

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

amy-petersonOur 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.

Guest Post: Problem-Based Learning for SPC

bumblauskasToday’s Guest Post comes from Dr. Dan Bumblauskas, who is an assistant professor and the Hamilton/ESP International Fellow for Supply Chain and Logistics Management at the University of Northern Iowa. Dan is also VP at PFC Services, a consulting firm dedicated to helping businesses improve process efficiency. 

If you’re reading this blog I am sure that you, like me, have experimented with and deployed a variety of teaching techniques in OM courses over the years. Today I’d like to share one such initiative I embarked upon a number of years ago: the development of a problem-based learning module for statistical process control (PBL-SPC).  Along with faculty and graduate students from both the colleges of business and education, I developed a web-based simulation in which students immerse themselves in a Frito-Lay factory environment based on Jay, Barry, and Chuck’s cases provided in their textbook.

The motivation for the PBL-SPC was that I found this to be a challenging topic to cover which students often find difficult to relate to and/or boring. Three different poor quality scenarios are provided (crushed chips, stale chips, and poor tasting or nasty chips) and students, as individuals or in teams, must traverse the simulated environment to assess the situation. By “speaking” with the fictitious characters created in the simulation the students get varying perspectives from the manufacturing supervisors for each area of the plant. In addition, some stations have data sets that can be downloaded as MS Excel spreadsheets to be further analyzed using SPC techniques.

Here is the link to the PBL-SPC: https://sites.uni.edu/bumblaud/ where you can access various menu options by hovering over the “Home,” button or clicking on 1 of the 3 scenarios. Under the “Home,” button, you will find the mission statement, production line schematic, staff profiles, an operational overview and a production video produced by Jay and Barry (Pearson) a few years ago.

For more information and materials, such as the team-based rubric created in conjunction with the PBL website, contact me at daniel.bumblauskas@uni.edu or 319-273-6793.

Teaching Tip: Helping Your OM Students Assess Their Progress

studentsFaculty Focus (Feb. 6, 2017) suggests that before midterm exams you enable your OM students to assess their performance and set goals, as well as to ask questions of and provide feedback to you. One way to do this reflective opportunity is through an online journal assignment in which students do the following:

  • Report their overall grade in the course
  • Report their attendance record (when attendance is required)
  • Reflect on their performance, whether it meets their expectations
  • Provide goals for the rest of the course (often in the form of a GPA, but can also be learning outcomes)
  • Provide feedback and ask questions

    Try to do this about a 1/3 of the way through a course so that underperforming students can still change trajectory. They can take 50-400 words to complete the assignment. Their posts range from brief conclusions that they are exactly where they want to be, to detailed descriptions of problems and questions about how to move forward. You won’t grade the assignment, but students will be required to complete it.

    Here’s what you need to know before you implement the progress report assignment.

    • Instructor requirements. (1) Students must have already completed some graded assignments, and (2) they must be able to see the individual grades and understand how they contribute to the course grade.
    • Large classes? This activity would not take long for the tremendous benefit it provides to the class dynamic, student success, and your end-of-semester evaluations, because many reports do not require a lengthy response.
    • Non-tech version. If homework is given through the university’s LMS, it is easy to give an online assignment for this progress report. If you prefer an offline version you can allow students to type or write their progress reports and turn them in during class.

    This small activity can have a big impact on students and on your OM teaching. It also builds strong rapport at critical points early in the semester.