Improving university teaching: a professional service operation perspective

The purpose of this paper is to take a professional service operation (PSO) perspective to reconceptualise a persistent pedagogical dilemma of teaching large classes into a process design challenge. This enables developing a solution that reduces labour intensity and improves the customisation of teaching.

This work is based on a single-case analysis of an undergraduate operations management course taught at a UK-based global top-50 business school. The research process follows the design science approach where a prior course design is analysed and a redesign is presented, refined and tested using data on student satisfaction.

The course redesign is based on the flipped learning pedagogy, and uses a combination of process analysis and educational science perspectives. The redesign seems to provide the benefits to students without increasing labour intensity. The developed six-step systematic approach should reduce the labour intensity of university-level teaching operations, while providing additional possibilities for customisable in-class active learning.

The empirical findings from the single-case design cannot be directly generalised to other contexts. However, the developed six-step systematic approach for redesigning the university-level teaching process should be applicable to other teaching operations to drive value creation and improve processes.

This study shows how the resource-constrained value creation of teaching operations can be improved systematically using process analysis perspectives. The work also scrutinises the flipped learning pedagogy from a PSO perspective and shows its benefits for improving teaching operations compared to traditional lecturing.