User-defined content, interaction instead of information, access whatever whenever… sounds familiar? This was “Web 2.0“. The concept is now also revolutionalising learning (or if you want it, education). Skype, iTune, YouTube, webcasts, podcasts, blogs (yeah), all this technology can be used for learning purposes. The Economist this week even had a feature on “Mandarin 2.0“, downloading lectures and listening to dialogues on iPod, printing out characters, skyping in a group with your lecturer with or without a webcam. The crucial question is, how can we use learning 2.0 in SCM education?
Lamentably, I don’t even know a single e-book focusing on SCM, nor any good online course for self-learning. No publishing house seems to be interested in the idea, either. Also, we preach customisation and modularisation (check out Mikkola and Skjøtt-Larsen’s 2004 article in Production Planning and Control on the topic) but haven’t yet implemented Árni’s idea of “chapters on demand“, i.e. the ”create your own course book” principle. And, though virtual inventories, transportation brokerages etc. have been discussed in length in SCM literature, I’m still waiting for a virtual community for supply chain education to appear. BUT, there are now series of supply chain webinars available, and the rest of learning 2.0 is certainly on its way. Which is one more good reason for the topic of next year’s Educators’ Day at Nofoma: E-Learning in Global Education.
Yet I might want to end this with another question: are students really customers? What’s the point of university education if we only provide what the “customer” (or user of learning 2.0) wants? This runs into the same problems as benchmarking, reinforcing existent structures instead of setting new ones. To live with Kenth Lumsden’s words, SCM education should push the envelope, keep up with, but also set the trends, induce innovation, change the way industry is currently operating etc. Educators are NO “prostitutes”, after all 
Gyöngyi
PS. InterOrganisational is introducing a new page for announcements of CFPs, conferences and doctoral courses – “the wall“. The announcement of a first – you’ll laugh – virtual course for doctoral students can be found there already.
1 response so far ↓
Richard // June 18, 2007 at 2:57 am |
Hello Gyöngyi,
I came across your article today and found it interesting that someone else sees the same issues that I too have grappled with for at least ten years in sheer frustration and disappointment. It seems to me academia has most certainly failed to keep pace and embrace the use of technology for delivery of educational material and at an affordable price. Technology should reduce the cost of education which is a derived benefit to the consumer (student). And yes, students are most certainly customers, although some institutions of higher learning seem to forget that trivial point. After all, is it not true customers of any business would expect operating costs to go down, quality and customer service to improve as technology increases? If not, many businesses are most certainly going in the wrong direction.
Recently, I have checked out so-called curriculums for SCM at a number of different well know univeristies is the U.S. and to my amazement not one appeared to be equivalent of the other in content. Each seemed to a different slant of which courses constituted a supply chain management program. Most seemed to be the same old operations management curriculum with some transportation course thrown in for good measure. Some even offer week long executive seminars for a very hefty price. Of course this is out of reach for most people and many companies will not spend that kind of money of most supervisors and mid-managers who are actually executing SCM on a day-to-day basis at the operational and tactical levels. These people need to have a good understanding of many aspects of business besides a tremendous overdose of accounting, finance and economics. For example, export and import rules, supplier relationship mangement, customer relationship system, purchasing, transportation (all forms), basic analysis, statical and problem solving techniques and skills, ecommerce, ERP systems, Lean methods, training and mentoring skills, budgeting, basic computer applications skills, etc. These are the practical and useful. Yes, accounting, finance, and economics helps, but I can buy a boat load of accounting and finance people. Most ops people only need the fundamentals of accounting to get by.
If the Department Chairs were really good, they would go and talk to the middle management people from around the globe to get a better understanding of their operational activities/needs and develop a internationally recognized certification program and further undergraduate, masters and Phd. programs so, we are all of the same page globally.
Along with web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it, the technology is there being refined and consolidated to provide global programs at a very reasonable cost to their customers (students) domestically and internationally. I just think and believe we need a consistent, cost efficient program with consistent course topics.
As far as books go on the subject of SCM, I think the best I have read (its a textbook) is Supply Chain Management Processes, Partnerships, Performance by Douglas M. Lambert (Editor) Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. I found it to be very through of the subject. You might try Amazon.
Richard
PS: I am also a strong advocate that with all of the taxes people world wide pay… education should be absolutely free to anyone who wants it.