Accrediting organizations in higher education have shifted emphasis from indirect measures such as student course evaluations, focus-group interviews, and employer surveys to direct measurement of student performance using appropriate assessment instruments. In response, we developed a spreadsheet tool for reports and analysis of test assessments…

There is a significant amount of data available about students and their learning activities in many educational systems today. However, these datasets are frequently spread across several different digital services, making it challenging to use them strategically. In addition, there are no established standards for collecting, processing,…

Facility placement is of strategic importance to most organizations as a well-placed distribution center minimizes delivery costs and reduces fulfillment lead times, thus improving customer service levels. Because organizations value the location planning process, this teaching brief offers an exercise that analyzes the planning process using the…

It is often challenging to make decisions about how to teach planning within an undergraduate operations management module. This article defines and compares the two standard options available to instructors: (a) the traditional "technical" approach or (b) the "conceptual" or "conversational" approach. Through a…

This case study focuses on modeling and analyzing the practices concerning the staffing of the immigration agency at the Island of Tropical Paradise International Airport, which is responsible for processing arriving passengers into the country. Students are challenged to model the status quo of immigration employee scheduling and analyze various…

In US colleges, the scarcity of students from low-income families is a major concern. We present a novel way of boosting the percentage of qualified low-income students using constrained optimization (CO), an operations research technique. CO allows incorporation of both academic requirements and diversity goals in college admissions. The incoming…

The Traveling Salesman and Vehicle Routing Problems are integral parts of bachelor and master programs related to Operations Research/Management Science. This is due to their relevance in both practical applications and research. For students, it is essential to gain a deep understanding of the problems' inherent complexity. For this, several…

This paper proposes the production of animated comics in POWTOON to serve as a visual collaborative tool and a teaching-learning strategy for a course on Operations Research. This proposal aims to achieve meaningful learning of the subject matter, incentivizing the creativity of undergraduate students of marketing and business at the Guadalajara…

Purpose: The Mechanical Engineering course at the University of Campinas is composed of different disciplines in the areas of materials, mechanical design, manufacturing (production and manufacturing), computational systems, thermal and fluids. In the manufacturing area, in particular, there is a discipline entitled Productive Systems whose main…

Over the past decades, science funding shows a shift from recurrent block funding towards project funding mechanisms. However, our knowledge of how project funding arrangements influence the organizational and epistemic properties of research is limited. To study this relation, a bridge between science policy studies and science studies is…

This paper critically examines the treatment of the statistical basis for Six Sigma and process capability in popular operations management textbooks. It discusses areas of confusion and suggest ways of treating the topic that make sense to instructors as well as students. Even though Six Sigma was introduced almost 30 years ago, misconceptions…

10 million students walk into rural schools every school day, representing about 20% of the United States' public school population. More than a third of all public schools and almost three-fifths of local education agencies serve rural students. Creating coherent, scalable strategies to impact rural students can be difficult given the diffuse and…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this exploratory, observational study was three-fold: 1) Determine current food safety practices at Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) sites; 2) Identify types of food served at the sites and collect associated temperatures; and 3) Establish recommendations for food safety training in the SFSP.…

The author draws upon over four decades of experience in student affairs administration to investigate how senior student affairs officers can incorporate intersectionality into comprehensive and targeted decision-making processes, strategic planning, and organizational considerations.

This paper aims to explore Academic Staff Governor (ASG) roles at three further education colleges in England. Uniquely, the research focuses on ASG activities, the understanding of ASG roles, and aspects of the role that can be reimagined, which may be of benefit to practising governors, particularly ASGs such as further education (FE) teacher…