During my Master's degree studies, one of the more interesting courses I have taken is Supply Chain. In fact, Supply Chain is my first course in logistics; despite this, however, I am finding there are many links between the objectives of this course and my own background in business. Save for the first three lectures in the course, the topics found in this course have been quite challenging. Many times, I would have to review the lecture slides at home, and perform extra research on many of the process definitions provided in the course in order to fully understand these concepts. In some instances, I would even have to translate the definitions into simpler language, and read case studies on the topic in order to ensure that I understood the topics completely.
On the topic of the learning strategies presented in the course, I was very impressed by the various methods used to instruct, including the videos. They were really interesting, and helped to further my knowledge in the subject matter in a fascinating and dynamic way. They served to summarize the lecture ideas for me somewhat, which proved quite helpful in my understanding of them.
In terms of my experience working with the team, I have mixed feelings about my own personal experience. In my mind, working with a team should be interesting, and a decent way of reflecting the real work environment - however, I encountered many difficulties that prevented me from understanding much of the team projects and cooperating fully with the rest of the team. I worked with four men of Chinese descent; while they all got along famously, I felt somewhat left out at first because my nationality was different. They all spoke Chinese to each other when working, which left me at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of understanding what they were doing; this left a lot to be desired in my communications with them. Given their insistence on just speaking in their native language to each other, I found it difficult to contribute to the team, suggest new things to them, or even understand the ideas they were discussing.
With that in mind, however, I did my best to deal with them and convey my frustration at the language barrier and the lack of inclusiveness. Eventually, they started to understand my plight and my suggestion that we all speak English in the meetings. At the same time, it was still a struggle even after that language change, because of their difficulty with the language which left it hard to understand what they were saying. Despite this, it was still a relative improvement, and so I managed to struggle through. Even though we had this small breakthrough, our presentation was a disaster. I believe that we had a great idea that links directly to the content of the course; however, we could not deliver the message correctly because of the language barrier. What's more, some group member summaries made it sound like it was individual work where we did not cooperate.
Supply Chain is an incredibly useful course for me; it reflects the main needs of a business. The lectures were just fine as a format, but some small improvements in style, tone and organization could improve the lectures as a whole. The question review in place now is quite helpful and is good at summarizing the most important points. If we were to improve it in the future, however, I would say that the tutorial time should be expanded to an hour and a half. The end of each lecture should include a short case study that the student can go over and have notes for the next tutorial. This can serve to involve the student more in the tutorial, and we can learn from different group perspectives, especially their opinions on the topic at hand through the lens of their case study. The case study would be worth about 20% of the total grade, with 2% for ten tutorials total; this would replace the weekly peer evaluation for the wiki, which I perceive as unfair.
