Teaching supply chain management to industrial engineering students: Mixed vs. Pure approaches in simulation based training

We investigate two approaches incorporating two types of intragroup interaction (cooperative and competitive) using simulation based training (SBT) with teams-a pure and a mixed approach-within the supply chain management domain.SBTcommonly refers to the use of simulation in the context of education.Weexamine how a combination of these two interaction types would work in situations wherein both are used in succession. Our purpose is to improve teaching and establish better ways to educate industrial engineering students using SBT. The first hypothesis is that from a pedagogical perspective, it is more effective to use a mixed approach for intragroup interaction when using SBT techniques for engineering education than a pure approach. The second hypothesis is that when using a mixed approach, the order of the two interaction types affects the learning outcomes. The study examined the effects of a new advanced SBT computerized simulation environment on two classes of freshman undergraduates in an Industrial Engineering program in a premier technical university. Each student completed four exercises, of which the first and last were individual tasks and the middle two were done by teams of two students. The students' performance was statistically analyzed. The results, rendered as guidelines on how to use SBT for team training, indicate that when teaching using SBT, a mixed approach for intragroup interaction is better than a pure approach. Moreover, if a mixed approach is used, the order is significant. In particular, we found that it is preferable to start with competitive interaction and then move to cooperative interaction. Our findings suggest that at the training stage, it is better to train teams using both types of intragroup interaction, starting with a competitive interaction followed by a cooperative one.