Tag: Temple U.

OM Podcast #45: Inside Purchasing at Temple University

In our newest podcast episode, Barry Render and Misty Blessley sit down with Donna Schweibenz, former Senior Director of Purchasing at Temple University, for a fascinating look inside one of higher education’s most complex operational functions.

Donna brings 26 years of experience leading a centralized purchasing department responsible for everything from office supplies to cadavers for medical training—yes, cadavers! She shares how universities must navigate wide‑ranging procurement categories, strict compliance requirements, and unexpected challenges that arise even from seemingly simple purchases.

In this episode, Barry, Misty, and Donna discuss:

  • The sheer variety of goods and services a major university must procure, and the challenges the centralized purchasing team faces.
  • The creation of a three‑university purchasing alliance between Temple, Penn State, and Pitt, and how collaboration led to better pricing and efficiencies.
  • What people often misunderstand about purchasing, including bid thresholds, contracts, warranties, lead times, vendor vetting, and how essential communication is to prevent operational issues.

 

TRANSCRIPT LINK

Donna Schweibenz

A Word document of this podcast will download by clicking the word Transcript above.

Prof . Misty Blessley
Prof. Barry Render

 

 

 

 

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Guest Post: Another Successful Semester with MyOMLab at Temple U.

 

HowardWeiss2Howard Weiss is Professor of Operations Management at Temple University. He has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM for our text

In the past, I have guest posted about my students’ appreciation of MyOMLab– and that appreciation is even greater now! At the beginning of the semester I always ask students about any experiences they have had with the MyLabs. This semester, for the first time, well more than half the class had previously used at least one of the following; MyAccountingLab, MyMarketingLab , MyMISLab or MyStatLab. These students were already familiar with the MyOMLab structure so they could use it with no explanation. Further, about 1/4 of the students were concurrently enrolled in MyFinanceLab and MyOMLab. This makes for a single sign-on to get to both courses; and the synergy among all these labs greatly improves the students’ experiences and productivity.

Past students had commented that the exams were not like the homework in that students could not redo problems on the exams while they could on the homework. Because of their observation, for each topic this semester I gave both homework and a quiz on MyOMLab. The students very much liked having the dual assignments each week.

My courses this semester were online/hybrid courses. While using MyOMLab makes homework grading easier in face-to-face classes it is even better in online sections because it enables homework submission without the students having to send me an email with attachments as they had done in past online sections.

Even though the course is online I do give my exams face-to-face. From the onset of my usage of MyOMLab the students have very much liked getting the exam results immediately after completing the exam. My better students review their exams after getting the grade and ask me questions about their mistakes. This seldom happened when I gave final exams because the students never saw their graded exams. Reviewing the exam makes for a great learning experience. After all, one of the best ways to learn is from our mistakes.

 

Guest Post: Custom Teaching Evaluations at Temple University

Howard WeissOur Guest Post today comes from Prof. Howard Weiss. Howard has developed both POM for Windows and Excel OM, which we provide free with our OM texts.

At Temple U., as at most colleges, we have long distributed course evaluations to students at the end of the semester. These evaluations include general questions about the quality of the instructor, the value of the course, the workload in the course and include opportunities for students to provide general comments. There are two glaring difficulties with these evaluations. Possibly due to Temple’s size, the results are not presented back to the faculty members until after the start of the spring semester. This makes it difficult to make adjustments in time for the spring semester based on fall results. More recently, a new difficulty has arisen. The university evaluations are performed on the web, and the response rate has dropped greatly.

For some time now, I have been giving my students my own evaluation, with questions that are much more specific than those on the university forms. I ask them about the course requirements and the weights that they think should be assigned to each requirement. I ask about the use of Excel in the classroom. I allow my students to use either POM for Windows, Excel OM, or both for homework and exams, and I ask them if I should continue to do so or require only one of the 2 packages. I ask about the value of preparing their presentations for my class, the value of actually presenting and the value of listening to classmates’ presentations.

Of course, I also ask about the use of MyOMLab in the class. Once again this fall, the students have overwhelmingly endorsed MyOMLab.  100% of students who responded to my survey agreed that MyOMLab should continue to be used for homework and quizzes. And 84%  wrote that I should continue to use MyOMLab for the exams. These results are very consistent with surveys from previous years.

I like having my own survey with specific feedback and receiving the feedback in time to prepare for the next semester. Do you agree?

Guest Post: The Numbers Don’t Lie

 Professor Howard Weiss at Temple University’s Fox School of Business writes about his experiences with MyOMLab. Howard, the developer of both Excel OM and POM for Windows,  is also Academic Director of  Temple’s EMBA program.

I just received my teaching evaluation scores from the Fall 2011 semester and once again they have improved. I have evaluations that go back to 2005, but Temple U. changed evaluation questions beginning in 2008 so I can only compare evaluations from 2008 and later. Fall of 2008 was the last year that I taught the course without MyOMLab.  The two questions that we consider the most important are:

  • The instructor taught this course well
  • I learned a great deal in this course.

My average score in 2008 on the first question above was 4.15. The average during my last 3 MyOMLab years is 4.43. On the second question, I have seen a steady increase. Before using MyOMLab the average was 3.95. Since 2009, the averages have risen each year from 4.1 to 4.3 to 4.4 this past Fall. Since the only change in the course has been my adoption of MyOMLab, I have to believe that use of MyOMLab is a major reason for the increase.

On the evaluations, several students write: “ MyOMLab was very helpful” or “MyOMLab contributes to my learning”. From discussions,  it is clear that they write this because  MyOMLab offers instant help when doing homework problems. They appreciate the feedback they receive when they enter an incorrect answer, and also the Help Me Solve This Option, which breaks down the problem step-by-step. They value the eText option which takes them directly to the right pages in the textbook. They don’t have to carry their textbook around, nor do they have to page through the textbook to find the relevant information. Of course, when they are stuck on a problem, they like the Ask My Instructor option and my responsiveness to their questions sent to me from MyOMLab. (I appreciate that the homework problem from MyOMLab is included in the email I am sent.)

 The only negative comment on the evaluations was in 2009, and was about  MyOMLab having little tolerance for round off errors. This has been corrected  and is no  longer an issue.  My hope is that MyOMLab will get even better and that my evaluation scores will also!

Guest Post: Using MyOMLab for Exams at Temple University

Today’s Guest Post comes from Professor Howard Weiss at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Howard, the developer of both Excel OM and POM for Windows,  is also Director of  Temple’s EMBA program.

When myomlab first became available in the Fall of 2009 I had some qualms about using it for my exams because it was new technology and I was worried that there might be technical problems. On my midterm exam, I gave my usual paper exam except that I put one question on myomlab in order to see how the process worked. It worked flawlessly. Even when one or two students had some issue in the middle of the exam, the exam reopened at the same point where it closed. For my final exam I gave half of the problems on paper exams and half on myomlab. The students loved getting their myomlab grade immediately. Of course, I loved not having to grade those exams and I also loved that students had different data from each other for the same problems.

When I surveyed my students they requested that the entire exam should be from myomlab. I am not sure how much of their opinion was positive towards myomlab and how much was negative towards my own questions but I certainly had no reservations about accommodating the students. Since that first semester I have used myomlab exclusively for my undergraduate exams. It is even nicer to use myomlab now than when it first came out because it now has a feature that allows me to enter my own problems or questions into the exam.

There can be one downside to using myomlab. Myomlab does not give partial credit in the way a professor would. For example, on my written exams, if a student entered a wrong demand rate in an inventory model but otherwise interpreted the results properly I would give half credit even though all of the answers would be wrong. In myomlab, the student gets no credit. Of course, I have warned my students about this and told them they need to be extra careful when using myomlab just like they need to be extra careful when filing a tax return. Myomlab is as unforgiving as the IRS when mistakes are made!

OM Syllabi: Temple U., Washington State U., Texas Tech U. and Rollins College

Jay and I never cease to be impressed by the variety of ways our colleagues teach OM at their schools.  Some profs spend 2 weeks on LP, others focus on quality and process strategy, while others actually cover all 17 chapters in sequence! We thought you might be interested in how different schools using our text face that challenge. So today we share 4 OM syllabi with you from a wide variety of  schools. Here they are:

Temple University, taught by Howard Weiss, as an undergrad course. MSOM 3101 syllabus. You might note Howard’s use of Excel OM, POM, and MyOMLab in homework assignments.

Texas Tech University, taught by Phillip Flamm, as a large section undergrad course.  ISQS 3344 syllabus. Phillip makes extensive use of “clickers” in his classes, as he noted in his Guest Blog last week.

Washington State University, taught by Chuck Munson, as an undergrad course. Mgt Op 340 syllabus. Note how Chuck integrates The Goal and MyOMLab into his course.

Rollins College, taught by Barry Render, as an MBA core course. POM 503 syllabus. You will notice that I have a lot of guest speakers. I use MyOMLab  for pre-class quizzes, homework, and tests. Because it is a graduate class, there are cases assigned every week.

We invite you to share your OM syllabus with us as well. Just send  it as a Word file or as an internet link to brender@cfl.rr.com.