Enhancing Quality Teaching in Operations Management: An Action Learning Approach

Abstract

Action learning motivates students to solve open‐ended problems by “developing skills through doing’. This paper reviews the concept of action learning and discusses the adoption of action learning approach to teach operations management at Universities. It presents the design and delivery of an action‐learning course at City University of Hong Kong. The course incorporates classroom lectures, tutorials and an action‐learning workshop. The experience gained proves that action learning facilitates student participation and teamwork and provides a venue of accelerating learning where enables students to handle dynamic problem situations more effectively. The paper concludes that adopting action‐learning approach can help lecturers to enhance quality teaching in operations management courses, and provide an alternate means of effective paradigm other than traditional classroom teaching and/or computer‐based training at universities.