Operations Projects in an Introductory Operations Management Undergraduate Course: Benefits over Alternatives
Alan Jin, Margaret Cunningham, Lifang Wu, and Mina Lee
Xavier University, USA
Volume 10: 2016, pp. 103-128; ABSTRACT
This article presents a field project used in an introductory undergraduate operations management course and explores in depth the students’ perceived benefits of this pedagogical tool. The students selected local businesses and used course knowledge to analyze their operations, identify problems, and make recommendations for improvement. The students indicated that the project had several major benefits besides significant learning outcomes, and they overwhelmingly favored this project as a challenging experiential learning activity. They also believed that it had several major advantages over case studies and non-local public company studies, and most of them preferred this project to these other two learning techniques. We conclude with implications for business instructors and future research.
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