At the forefront of sharing knowledge on how to teach operations management, here are two repositories of ops mgmt syllabi: one of the Academy of Management Operations Management Division (AoM), the other of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). There is also a teaching insights page of Emerald – but it would be great to have a similar collection of SCM courses for syllabus development…
Gyöngyi
Edutainment or playful learning? Luckily there are tons of educational games out there. Some new ones I discovered are card games on vaccinations, climate change etc. and a wonderful collection on e-games and also videos for ops mgmt and SCM class. Time to start playing!
Gyöngyi
Some may find it disturbing that not everything has a clear-cut solution. Yet the “managers not MBAs” mantra needs critical thinking and the ability to approach a problem from several dimensions – which is finally also appraised by the New York Times that comprised a story about critical thinking at business schools. Less surprisingly, rethinking the MBA was on the agenda of the “Deans Conference” as well. Just when will “leading” business schools stop discussing SCM teaching cases with a sole solution in mind?
Gyöngyi
PS. Thx to Jonathan Schroeder for the link to the NYTimes article.
Where is the impact of benchmarking exercises? The bestLog project group probably wondered the same when leaving over their results (and from Feb2010, their website) to the European Logistics Association. ELAbestlog includes SCM case studies, reports on logistics education in Europe and an education directory, and at least on the old bestLog website, one could put in their own (European) logistics events. Let’s hope ELA makes the best of it – and updates this website at least a bit more frequently.
Gyöngyi
CSCMP calls for teaching cases – and awards them, too. Full cases as well as mini cases are of interest, importantly, along with teaching notes. The deadline for these “academic cases” is Feb 1, 2010
Gyöngyi
Not yet on TeacherTube but on his own blog, Christian Grönroos has published 8 short videos on the marketing of services, all from what services are all about to issues on productivity. Though I wonder, are “products really dead“?
Gyöngyi
Who said e-books had to be books in pdf format on the web? The Geography of Transport Systems goes to show that e-ducation can indeed be different, more interlinked (or hyperlinked), more up to the user what to read first and how to link back and look up terms etc. What is more, it actually comes with figures on slides for educational purposes. I loved the “for personal or classroom use only” (emphasis added). It’s just to wish more SCM (or OM, LM, you name it) textbooks would follow suit…
Gyöngyi
Whether at the local library, online on facebook, or as a tv show, there are lots and lots of reading clubs. Tolkien belonged to one. Kids have their own. Academics have their own rules. Princeton even awarded Oprah an honorary doctorate in 2002, partly for her online reading club! Allegedly an idea at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, reading clubs are arranged by students for students. Though I guess this one at the Oxford University Press website is not that particular Oxford Reading Club 
Gyöngyi
Academics are more often than not required to work in all of the three areas of teaching, research and service – the latter commonly also called “administration”, as it’s not all about outreach to the community but rather, keeping a university going. This leads to an ongoing debate on whether teaching is done at the expense of research, whether one can be only good at some of these tasks but not all etc. This reminds me of a survey (coming some years ago from the University of Porto) that asked about our teaching loads; a tricky question in itself. How are teaching loads defined anyway? In-class teaching varies a lot in intensity and preparation depending on level, type of “lecture” and interaction, number of students etc.
More seriously, at least related to teaching and research, marketing scholars have now investigated the effects of research (quantified as academic publishing) on MBA education. Mitra and Golder (2008) indeed found that research has a positive effect on MBA programmes, though more in terms of their reputation and subsequent recruitment than education itself. Time to join the debate on their blog!
Gyöngyi
PS. Though it is lamentable how scant articles on logistics education are, there are also good news, e.g. Gravier and Farris’ (2008) analysis of logistics pedagogical literature that just appeared in IJLM.
SCM courses have traditionally included simulation exercises – if nothing else, playing the beer game. There are lots of educational games on the market, and as we all know, our students are quite “game-literate”, having grown up with PlayStation, Nintendo, Second Life, you name it. Just, who trains the trainers, i.e. where do educators get a chance to develop their own gaming skills; what is more, skills to use simulation exercises in the classroom?
Considering this question, it came to me as a surprise that there are some free(!) train the trainer courses for SCM educators – see LINKS‘ simulation exercises. Sure it’s a free-bee for the company to get their simulation exercises being used, but in any case, we all need further training as SCM educators, don’t we?
Gyöngyi
PS. Having just participated in the International Teachers Programme, I can nothing but recommend taking some pedagogical courses – especially once ITP will be organised by nobody else than Sunil Chopra at Kellogg‘s / Northwestern (in 2009/10 and 2010/11). At least you know what you’ll get for breakfast
