Julie Ann Stuart Williams’s research while affiliated with University of West Florida and other places

Despite organizations increasingly seeking talent to identify data to make better business decisions, many assignments provide the data for the students. This article encourages curriculum to introduce data and information request dimensions, identify data sources, write data and information requests, and reflect on data request examples. We propose a three-step writing exercise with a data and information request rubric. A pilot study for an operations management data and information request revealed that participants struggled to specify four data request dimensions: an appropriate recipient, adequate data, a data format, and an information security level.

How can students prepare for potential business disruptions? The approach shown in this paper uses optimization modeling with parametric sensitivity analysis and further broadens the search for insights with structural sensitivity analysis in a series of contextual exercises. The exercises prompt students to identify critical resources for business impact analysis by extending production planning to include scenario analyses and contingency considerations. During virtual office hours, one participant described the exercises in terms of a “mystery” to solve. For an open-ended contingency planning question, some participants even proposed new product design decisions. Upon conclusion of the study, 25 of the 28 participants recommended the exercises for future semesters. Funding: Graduate assistant support for P. E. Billings and N. C. Belford was provided by the College of Business at the University of West Florida. Supplemental Material: The supplemental material is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2022.0279 .

Our study examines whether student business writing in pre-requisite courses and student use of university-provided writing support services are associated with student writing performance in the business capstone course in strategic management. Our results indicate that the number of writing center consultations over time and student performance in a pre-requisite business communication course were both positively associated with writing performance in the business capstone course. In addition, student performance in both the operations management and business communication courses were found to be strongly correlated with student performance in the capstone course. These findings support engaging students in repeated practice of business writing.

This article examines a manageable approach that provides students with significant opportunities to write and improve their writing over time in an introductory quantitative business course. The study examines six elements of written communication skills, as evidenced by assessment data from memorandum assignments administered following pedagogical interventions throughout the semester in an operations management course. Results demonstrate that student performance of audience identification, action-oriented request, and punctuation improved. Interestingly, student performance of grammar slightly decreased. A follow-up analysis indicates that some writing mistakes were related to a lack of proofreading. This article also presents original memorandum assignments and suggestions for improvement.

Novices need to learn how to recognize and correct formulation, spreadsheet, and writing mistakes. Yet quantitative business courses historically focus on examples of model formulation and more recently spreadsheet solution. This paper presents a feedforward example for formal instruction of troubleshooting issues for three domains, i.e., model formulation, spreadsheet development, and professional memo writing. The example is provided in a format for an active learning exercise.

Operations Research/Management Science educators need to promote learning outcomes related to building, solving, and interpreting a model, and producing associated business communications. In this paper, we present a test instrument that requires an evaluation of a two-decision business scenario in three domains. The first domain is formulating a linear programming model. The second is a graphical solution analysis. The third is describing the problem and interpreting the recommendation in a professional memo. Using this three-domain format in a quiz, we assess the quality of student performance across three domains, i.e., model formulation, graphical analysis, and management interpretation, for multiple problem components. Statistical results of the current study indicate that students struggle more with graphically solving and interpreting the model and its solution than with formulating the model. In the current study, students are least successful in graphing the isoprofit line, graphing the constraints, and describing those constraints in the management interpretation. To our knowledge, these domains have not been previously reported for objective functions or constraints. Our study also shows that many students exhibit deficiencies in the mechanics of writing.

Frequently in Management Science courses, instructors focus primarily on teaching students the mathematics of linear programming models. However, the ability to discuss mathematical expressions in business terms is an important professional skill. The authors present an analysis of student abilities to discuss management science concepts through memo homework assignments. The findings indicate that average student grades on homework problems for linear programming formulations were always higher than average student grades on homework memos in which they write about their formulations. These results suggest that teaching managerial writing about analytical work is an important area for future business education research.

Although healthcare quality may improve with short-notice scheduling and subsequently higher patient show-up rates, the variability in patient flow may negatively impact the service design. This study demonstrates how to select the percentage for short-notice or open appointments in an open access scheduling system subject to two quality performance metrics. Specifically, we develop a mean–variance model and an efficient solution procedure to help clinic administrators determine the open appointment percentage subject to increasing the average number of patients seen while also reducing the variability. Our numerical results indicate that for cases with high patient demand and high patient no-show rates for fixed appointments, one or more Pareto optimal percentages of open appointments significantly decrease the variability in the number of patients seen with only a negligible decrease in the expected number of patients seen. While our method provides a useful tool for clinic administrators, it also presents a modeling foundation for open access scheduling with quality management objectives to smooth patient flow and improve capacity utilization.

Difficulty in scheduling short-notice appointments due to schedules booked with routine check-ups are prevalent in outpatient clinics, especially in primary care clinics, which lead to more patient no-shows, lower patient satisfaction, and higher healthcare costs. Open access scheduling was introduced to overcome these problems by reserving enough appointment slots for short-notice scheduling. The appointments scheduled in the slots reserved for short-notice are called open appointments. Typically, the current open access scheduling policy has a single time horizon for open appointments. In this paper, we propose a hybrid open access policy adopting two time horizons for open appointments, and we investigate when more than one time horizon for open appointments is justified. Our analytical results show that the optimized hybrid open access policy is never worse than the optimized current single time horizon open access policy in terms of the expectation and the variance of the number of patients consulted. In nearly 75% of the representative scenarios motivated by primary care clinics, the hybrid open access policy slightly improves the performance of open access scheduling. Moreover, for a clinic with strong positive correlation between demands for fixed and open appointments, the proposed hybrid open access policy can considerably reduce the variance of the number of patients consulted.

The authors describe how to structure a memo format for homework assignments in which a manager requests analysis of a particular issue from the student. The student must respond with a memo stating a recommendation and describing the solution approach. The results from using the memo format include improved student performance and professional writing on word-problem assignments.