I taught 3 sections of BUS-P 300: Introduction to Operations Management this spring. It is a course for business minors, and I get a broad spectrum of student majors. Most students were second-semester seniors. Each section had 40-43 students. Here is a bit of postmortem for me for the course.
Things that went well:
-Each test was worth 137 points. This makes it harder for the student to calculate their grade percentage immediately and leads to less complaining. Even if someone gets a 90/137, that still looks like a good score, even though it is really close to a failing grade. Thanks to Richard Thaler for the suggestion.
-All hands-on activities went really well. We simulated a production line to make paper airplanes. We played the beer game online. We tried out some wisdom of the crowd forecasting. I wish there were more ready-made activities for operations courses.
-I added a significant segment on sustainability and a full lecture on behavioral OM. I think both subjects were enjoyable.
-Most students seemed to enjoy the final group project setup, where they got to select their own groups (if desired) and their own topics. Some students wanted more rigidity in the process (forced topics, forced groups, or a more detailed rubric), but more students enjoyed the creativity that the process allowed.
-Videos of manufacturing and service environments helped drive discussion points home. Most students have little/no experience with real-world operational settings.
-I’m glad I stuck with Managing Operations Across the Supply Chain, 2nd edition, by Swink et al. It’s a good introduction to operations for non-technical undergrads. All the necessary material was there. Choosing a more technical book would have been a disaster.
-This was my entire required teaching load at Kelley. While it was hard to teach three courses in a day in the short-term, I think it will be a good long-term decision when I have the next year+ to focus on research.
Things that didn’t go particularly well:
-I allowed students to use laptops during class if they wished. In the future, I will be more discerning about when/how I let them use computers. Getting attention and participation in one of my three sections was like pulling teeth. They all seemed to collude and decide to pay more attention to their computers than me. The other sections didn’t have major issues.
-I tried to steer students toward interesting research projects for their final group project, but I would say that about 25-33% of the topics chosen were just dull or simplistic. Most of these came from groups that didn’t give any indication of their choice prior to the topic deadline. I should make groups come talk to me about their topic prior to selection. Perhaps just before/after class in the 2 weeks leading up to topic selection deadline. (On the other hand, 25-33% of the topics were extraordinary for an intro course.)
-I used half a lecture to teach EOQ and Newsvendor basics. Without showing the solution (calculus) technique (for EOQ) or understanding statistics distributions (for Newsvendor), these topics aren’t memorable, and they were among the most-missed subjects on the homeworks/exams. Most students were not proficient in calculus or statistics. Find a way to teach their insights without showing the derivation next time. Besides these, all other simple equations/derivations seemed to go over well.
-My lectures got more interesting as the semester went on. I was building upon old slides from other grad students, and early on I was not altering them enough for my teaching style. I think some of the early lectures were probably boring. I should have made more significant edits early on.
Overall, a successful course.
