Decision Sciences-Journal of Innovative Education最新文献

Preparing for tomorrow's supply chain leaders today involves an understanding of how students perceive the educational value of classroom learning approaches. To better understand how to prepare our students for the Industry 4.0 era, we surveyed current and former students on their perceptions of pedagogical methods that contributed to their learning and preparation to enter the workforce as supply chain management professionals. Results from former students, who are working in the supply chain management field, indicate that real-world teaching methods have a higher impact on learning than methods that are not as real-world. However, both groups rated guest speakers as the most effective learning method and lectures as the least effective. We offer an exploratory study motivated by students’ informal post-discussion of learning via Zoom during COVID-19. This article offers insights into how teachers should deliver supply chain content based on the student's perception of learning, an approach that will prepare students for supply chain management careers in the Industry 4.0 era.

In recent years, automated warehouses have become increasingly important to meet the rising demand of supply chain operations. Despite their growing relevance to industry, these systems remain largely underrepresented in academic settings, which contributes to a significant gap in student knowledge and preparedness. Traditional educational approaches often fail to equip future professionals with the practical skills required by modern logistics systems. While the learning factory paradigm partially addresses this gap, it typically places limited emphasis on logistics processes. To bridge this divide between theory and industrial practice, a hands-on learning experience was conducted in a logistics-focused learning factory involving Bachelor's and Master's engineering students. A structured questionnaire was administered to evaluate students’ perceptions of automated warehouses, and statistical methods were employed to analyze both the short- and medium-term impacts of the experience. Findings revealed a strong interest among students in industrial logistics, despite limited prior exposure to automation technologies. Consistent with previous research, the hands-on approach was particularly effective for Master's students, highlighting its potential as a valuable educational tool in logistics engineering.

Flying a paper airplane as a standalone activity is hardly a novel instructional practice. However, in a typical university business analytics course where most work is on a computer, such a tactile experience is innovative. Aiming to build a paper airplane as an artifact, measure and record its characteristics, and report results provides an engaging opportunity for students to simulate a supply chain work experience. The paper airplane competition described in this brief provides instructors freedom within a framework to customize the practice of data acquisition for management decision-making. The illustration of key concepts in operations and supply chain management leads students to content and experiences consistent with components of the Education 4.0 framework. Course data include high self-reported levels of engagement; thus, we recommend using the paper airplane activity to demonstrate the business analytics process from data acquisition through visualization.

As educators, we seek engaging ways to demonstrate the crucial importance of developing appropriate management (HR) practices when undertaking international expansion. In this exercise, teams are asked to formulate and justify human resource/talent management policy modifications that contribute to a competitive advantage for a hypothetical North American niche grocery chain (Friendly & Fresh Foods) planning expansion into China. The exercise's unique value is its focus on the interconnectedness between business strategy, talent management, and culture in helping to “win” the local challenge when entering an unfamiliar territory where global leaders may need to adapt both competitive strategy and cultural practices to achieve business entry success. Recommendations are honed after consideration of their assigned home country's business model (differentiation or cost leadership) and the host country's culture. The choice of China as the expansion country serves to magnify the “distances” that must be examined when expanding internationally, in this case when a North American operation decides to expand its operations to China. The exercise's theoretical foundation is informed by international business, global human resource management, and cultural research. The exercise's effectiveness is well supported by graduate students who have experienced the exercise and by faculty evaluations of team presentations.

Supply chain disruptions can lead to shortages. To manage this risk, companies often adopt a customer segmentation strategy to prioritize customers when confirming orders. To protect the limited supply for important customers, strategic segments are created, where some segments are given priority at the expense of other segments. In enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, this process is behind the scenes and automated, meaning that students do not have the opportunity to grasp the logic and process involved. To extend student knowledge in this area, we developed an exercise through which students can learn the underlying rationale behind the customer segmentation strategy. In the exercise, students prioritize orders from current and new customers based on the customer segment. The results of a survey on this exercise provided evidence of student learning. Modeling the process in spreadsheets helps students gain knowledge and skills in automated backorder processing in ERP systems.

This teaching brief highlights innovative adaptations of established pedagogical techniques to equip students with critical skills for success in Industry 4.0. More specifically, this brief focuses on two courses: an undergraduate Operations and Supply Chain Management course and an MBA Supply Chain Management course, both designed to foster critical thinking, adaptability, and analytical skills aligned with the principles of Education 4.0. The MBA course is detailed, showcasing a dynamic structure that blends flipped classroom sessions, collaborative group activities, industry news discussions, real-time simulations like the Beer Game, and guest speaker engagements to deepen industry awareness and refine professional skills. The undergraduate course is presented with a brief overview, emphasizing an interconnected approach where students progress through foundational topics using iterative learning and culminate their experience with a competitive simulation. These approaches demonstrate how thoughtful integration of well-established methods with tailored innovations can support student learning in a technology-driven, globalized world. In this way, this teaching brief extends the current literature on deliberate practice in business education by offering a more comprehensive framework that integrates technical, strategic, and interpersonal competencies tailored to the demands of the modern supply chain landscape. In doing so, this pedagogical approach bridges the gap between academic instruction and industry practice, equipping students with the hard and soft skills essential for thriving in digital, automated, and interconnected supply chain environments.

This study leverages the digital sticky note feature in Zoom's whiteboard to provide students with opportunities to gain a better understanding of supply chain management through engagement and hands-on experience in a synchronous online class. The activity was implemented within an online graduate course in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the College of Business Administration at a public university. By using digital sticky notes to brainstorm and exchange ideas with their teammates, students designed supply chains for selected products. The activity provided students with the opportunity to interact with their peers, instructors, and course content, promoting high levels of engagement and enhancing comprehension of the supply chain concept. Survey results indicate that participants had a positive learning experience and an enhanced understanding of supply chain management.

In response to a large backlog of demand for data analytics expertise, universities are adding analytics courses and/or programs. Data visualization and exploration are among the pillars of the analytics curriculum and should be included in analytics programs. This article presents the philosophy, structure, and content of a data visualization and exploration course for senior undergraduate and master's level students. It presents the learning objectives, detailed criteria for selecting the reading materials, and visualization software for this course. In addition, this article shares lists of required and optional articles that were selected by an extensive review of literature in the field of data visualization and exploration. Analysis of assessments by the instructor and the independent assessment of student capstone projects by two reviewers showed that students learned the materials well and properly applied the knowledge they gained in this course to completing the capstone project. Student comments indicate that the course was well designed, that they enjoyed the course content, and that they found working with the visualization software beneficial.

This teaching brief presents a new experiential exercise for teaching statistical process control (SPC) within a quality management course. This novel approach involves a semester-long personal quality control project, where students apply SPC methodology to their daily habits, using data collected from their smart devices. Surveys conducted at the end of the semester show that students felt more confident using quality control concepts both personally and professionally. The survey results also suggest that students believe the exercise helped them to better understand their own daily habits and aided their ability to apply quality management methodologies through greater engagement with the concepts. This innovative teaching method both enhances students’ theoretical understanding and prepares them for effective problem-solving in industry settings.

Design thinking and design-oriented information systems share commonalities in applying specific toolsets to develop product and system designs that address strategic, managerial, and operational problems. How can design thinking be embedded as an innovative and creative learning process to facilitate decision-making in business intelligence and analytics within a classroom environment, particularly during the proof-of-concept stage? This study aims to expand these implications both academically and practically by presenting a technological, data-oriented design process for integrating design thinking into business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) curriculums. The proposed data-oriented design approach highlights five areas that serve as the building blocks of the BI and BA strategy: problem, data, analytics, technology, and user spaces. The case study of a retail supermarket provides guidelines on how alternative designs that emerge during the problem formulation stage of the design thinking approach are transformed into prototypes in the proof-of-concept stage and are subsequently tested and implemented to demonstrate their proof-of-value and proof-of-use in the retail industry. This study also outlines six key learning experiences—categorized as objectives, assessment, space, activities, artifacts, and culture—for teachers, students, IS scholars, CIOs, CDOs, and other top management to create a design-oriented organizational structure.