The capstone course, MSC 881: Global Logistics, is the only fully online course in the M.S. Program of the Department of Supply Chain Management . In choosing ANGEL and Breeze Meeting™ as the virtual classroom environment, the instructor sought to create a learning environment in which students are connected to the instructor and to other students in the course and replicate in as close to a true in-class environment as possible. This environment needed to include the capacity for students to pose questions to others, to observe the discussion leadership of their classmates, to share their current experiences and to link the conceptual material presented by the instructor to their business environments and current jobs.
Course modules begin with an embedded or linked videocast. The videocast is debriefed during online class meetings. Then the instructor lectures on several related topics. Case discussions are led primarily by a group of 3-4 students assigned in advance by the instructor. As differences of opinion arise, BreezeMeeting allows the instructor to frame them as questions and take voting polls during the discussion. Moreover, discussion boards can be used to organize student discussion into sets of take-aways for the class meetings. Student-to-student and instructor-to-student interaction occur throughout the course using the Share Documents, Share Desktops, and Discussion Board features of BreezeMeeting™.
The M. S. degree program structure does not make it possible for MSC 881 to be offered in the traditional in-person format. The program targets working professionals who cannot afford to leave their current professional positions to pursue the two-year full-time Broad MBA Program in-residence. There are four two-week residency periods during the 2-year program. This tight sequence has neither the flexibility nor the justification to have students return to campus for a fifth residency session to complete the capstone without extending the length of the program and increasing costs.
Four major outcomes were sought with the delivery format of MSC 881:
1. Authenticity and complexity: video and case teaching material were selected for their topical fit and to setup the inquiry nature of the course. Several in-class research tasks are accomplished so that students can explore their own need-to-know relative to the major project. These tasks and materials represent the kinds of tasks that take place in practice today in which companies often seek expertise and consultant research on many issues related to international logistics and doing business in foreign markets.
2. Active learning: the course research project provides a rich description of a realistic business problem but only in sufficient detail for students to initiate independent research as an extended problem-solving process.
3. Collaborative learning: In this course collaborative learning occurs in the informal and formal case discussion groups. Formal grading of the individual work is evaluated based on justification and rationales for the responses to assigned questions. In the previous years, this component of the course was strictly team-based along with the semester project. However, because all students are employed full-time and dispersed around the globe, coordination of team meetings and conference calls led to team conflict and the instructor modified the format for 2008.
4. Faculty as facilitator: The instructor was an authoritative source of knowledge on most, but not all material. Lecturing supplemented the foundational readings. In some instances, a few students held federal licenses on a topical area such as customs brokering. These represent opportunities for the instructor to allow these individuals to contribute first-hand practical knowledge on the topic.
Dr. Anthony D. Ross, Associate Professor, Supply Chain Management
Brandon Blinkenberg, VuDAT, e-Producer
