Active Learning Engagement Strategies for Improving Deductive Reasoning Instructions

Teaching operations strategy and mathematical programming can be challenging due their deductive-reasoning nature and different multimodalities. Students come to class with different learning styles and knowledge bases, and... [ view full abstract ]

Teaching operations strategy and mathematical programming can be challenging due their deductive-reasoning nature and different multimodalities. Students come to class with different learning styles and knowledge bases, and instructors have various teaching and classroom management techniques that often do not achieve what they desire. The result is dissatisfied students, who sometimes drop or fail the course, and form a negative opinion about the field. This research introduces a novel approach to teaching such courses. A five-year longitudinal study shows that hybrid active-learning methods perform better than traditional teaching strategies. This finding could lead to positive social change in higher education pedagogy.