Operations Management online at Dundalk Institute of Technology

This case study documents the development in Moodle of an online Operations Management module in the School of Business and Humanities at Dundalk Institute of Technology. The module is delivered over one semester to students on Level 7 and Level 8 programmes and also offered as a single module through the Lifelong Learning department.Prior to adopting online teaching and assessment, students were taught face to face in a large group lecture setting. The module which has been delivered over the past three years was redesigned with the expressed aim of engaging students in ongoing assessment for learning throughout the semester. On completion of the module each year, changes are made in a process of continuous improvement. The module demands that students study the course content independently and take several assessments on each of eight topics, all of which account total for 50% of the students’ final mark. The learning and assessments whilst asynchronous, is time dependent with each of eight topics opening and closing in sequence at fortnightly intervals. Students who miss a topic forego the marks, a feature that encourages time management. Critical to the module’s success has been the use of the essential textbook which every student purchases. The textbook comes with a wealth of resources and has a dedicated website where students can engage in formative assessment by attempting practice tests and problems. The assessment format varies from multiple choice and true or false type questions, to the more heavily weighted calculation questions and individually assigned problems. The assessments are in the main computer marked but the individually assigned problems are tutor marked with students receiving individualised feedback through Moodle. Students also sit a final exam, the format of which has changed over the three years from a written unseen paper, to a completely online final exam and most recently an open book unseen written paper.