Graduate Student Project: Operations Management Product Plan

Abstract

An operations management product project is an effective instructional technique that fills a void in current operations management literature in product planning. More than 94.1% of 286 graduates favored the project as a learning tool, and results demonstrate the significant impact the project had in predicting student performance. The author made several project changes over 12 course offerings. Results demonstrate (a) the value of group work over individual work, (b) the negative impact of presentations on students' project scores, and (c) the positive impact of continuous feedback on project results. Changes in project weight often result in a detrimental effect on students' other coursework. The results indicate that instructors need to carefully consider course-weighting schemes.

Keywords:

• operations management
• product project
• teaching