Assignment Of Grades And Student Performance In A Hybrid Operations Management Course: What Works And Ideas For Improvements

Abstract

The production and operations management class offered at California State University, Fresno underwent a transformation from being a four-unit, face-to-face course to a hybrid course.  This hybrid course, which is required for all students in the Craig School of Business, includes two units of face-to-face instruction each week, with some coverage of conceptual material as well as review and practice of the mathematical material presented online.   There are also two units of online streaming lecture instruction created and delivered by the course coordinator covering primarily quantitative material with some coverage of conceptual material for some chapters.  This second component translates into about ten hours of online related activities during the week for the students, requiring a large amount of self-discipline as they study and learn complex mathematical concepts applied to production management.  Students are expected to work through this material and complete corresponding quantitative worksheets prior to coming to class.  This paper compares the proportions of assigned grades of 116 students in four sections of the hybrid production and operations management class in the fall of 2006 to the proportions of assigned grades of 76 students in three sections of the course conducted in the spring of 2001, one of the last semesters that it was taught entirely in the classroom.  Changes that have taken place in the delivery of the course will be described, as well as suggestions for making the instructor’s delivery of the course more effective in the future.  Fisher’s exact test and chi-square analysis will be performed to determine if there was a significant change in the proportions of assigned grades between the face-to-face format and the hybrid course.  One item of particular interest is the proportion of assigned grades on the comprehensive, final exam, the content of which was virtually the same in 2001 as in 2006.  Thus, it provides a consistent measure of the students’ overall understanding of both conceptual and mathematical material at the end of the semester.