This article presents a classroom exercise, centered on a simulation that has been used for 4 years in an MBA program to help students develop an understanding of the trade-offs involved in managing capital assets in the public sector. Though often ignored in business schools, "mission" is a key criterion that must be considered when…

This article provides educators in business schools with a new interdisciplinary experiential lab game called Supply Chain-Marketing (SC-Mark) Shark Tank game, which can be implemented in both Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Marketing courses. The SC-Mark experiential lab game is a real-life business environment simulation that explores…

Service-learning (SL) is a pedagogical approach in which students are assigned a course-related project in a not-for-profit organization, and are tasked to apply course content to execute the project. While the benefits are multifarious, only recently have supply chain management (SCM) courses adapted this innovative teaching methodology. The…

By delivering lectures online using screen capture technology, students can learn course material at the time and location of their choice, when they are in control to pause, rewind, and fast forward the professor. Class time is no longer spent teaching basic concepts, but rather focused on more value-added activities such as problem solving,…

Students have been slow to adopt e-textbooks even though they are often less expensive than traditional textbooks. Prior e-textbook research has focused on adoption behavior, with little research to date on how students perceive e-textbooks fitting their needs. This work builds upon Task-Technology Fit (TTF) and Consumer Acceptance and Use of…

Instructors look for ways to explain to students how supply chains can be constructed so that competing suppliers can work together to improve inventory management performance (i.e., a phenomenon known as co-opetition). An Excel spreadsheet-driven simulation is presented that models a complete multilevel supply chain system--customer, retailer,…

This article describes a practical methodology for assigning students to groups where the goal is to create diversity within the groups while taking into consideration the preferences of the students. A motivating application of this work is the assignment of students to first-year seminars. In this common scenario, students select and rank a…

The impact of the Guided Problem Based Learning (Guided PBL) approach on Critical Thinking (CT) skills in a core business analysis course was examined. The implementation of this approach included using a textbook created for this purpose, which presents problems first, with blank spaces for students to work them out. Discussion of the concepts…

This paper reports on the cross-disciplinary research that resulted in a decision-support tool, Team Machine (TM), which was designed to create maximally diverse student teams. TM was used at a large United States university between 2004 and 2012, and resulted in significant improvement in the performance of student teams, superior overall balance…

Faculty and students are increasingly faced with the opportunity to use electronic versions of textbooks (e-texts). Despite the advantages of e-texts and recent advances in technology, evidence suggests that students are still reluctant to adopt and use e-texts. This situation leads us to investigate two research questions: What factors contribute…

This article examines the value of using complex animated PowerPoint presentations to teach operations management techniques and concepts. To provide context, literature covering the use of PowerPoint animations in business education is briefly reviewed. The specific animations employed in this study are identified and their expected benefits to…

This article describes a "conscientious consumerism" project that involves the student as the consumer to either commend or complain to a company about a recent product or service experience. This activity and presentation helps students develop an understanding of the commendation/complaint management process within organizations while…

An exploration of the preferred learning styles for over 1,100 business students has yielded an intriguing result. While many previous studies have examined the learning styles in different majors at different universities, these studies have been focused on describing the typical student for that major. This study demonstrates that the preferred…

Student Evaluations of Instruction (SEIs) from about 6,000 sections over 4 years representing over 100,000 students at the college of business at a large public university are analyzed, to study the impact of noninstructional factors on student ratings. Administrative factors like semester, time of day, location, and instructor attributes like…

The SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) Model Supply Chain Classroom Simulation is an in-class experiential learning activity that helps students develop a holistic understanding of the processes and challenges of supply chain management. The simulation has broader learning objectives than other supply chain related activities such as the…