You have just been hired to teach Supply Chain Management in the MBA Program of the University of Sparkwimville. Over the next several weeks you will be creating lesson plans, assessments, and other curriculum pieces for your course, all while receiving feedback from your head of department and colleagues. Welcome to your start as a doctoral practitioner-level educator.

Adult learners will come to your class seeking expert knowledge from you, the instructor, and they will submit coursework according to their particular understanding of your instructions (typically nothing more, and sometimes much less). Your MBA students at Sparkwimville are working adults with busy lives. To begin this week, you will be reviewing foundational adult learning frameworks and theories to understand how to teach these learners. Then you will create a welcome video and transcript to introduce yourself to your students, briefly present your vision of the class you will be teaching, and tell your students what they can expect from you this term.

As you work through planning your supply chain management course, keep in mind the following course learning objectives that your department chair has given you:

1. Identify the elements of a supply chain.
2. Describe the challenges of coordinating a supply chain.
3. Explain the role of the supply chain in enabling business competitiveness.
4. Recommend a framework for supply chain management.
5. Analyze contemporary trends and issues in effective supply chain management.

Note: Assessments in this course are designed to be completed in the order they are presented in the courseroom. Please make sure you complete them in order.

Overview

You are teaching an online class of MBA students at Sparkwimville University about the current trends and issues of supply chain management. You can reasonably expect that your target student has some exposure to supply chain concepts in their undergraduate studies. As a refresher, you can begin the class by introducing them to originating concepts of supply chain management and its goals and implications. Thereafter, you will integrate a more advanced understanding of supply chain management and its relevance to the issues facing industry today.

Social presence is an important contributing factor for student success, so please begin by creating a video to welcome your students. You will inform your learners about class policies and course expectations, as well as provide an overview of key concepts that the class will cover. This video is to be a positive and professional welcome to your MBA students.

• Think about what you would have liked in a welcome video from faculty when you were going through your own master's program.
• Think about how you want to build your brand and beliefs as an educator, and how you can communicate that to your students.
• Think about the top three takeaways you want your students to receive from your welcome video and plan how you will ensure these points are clearly communicated.

Instructions

There are two parts to this assessment; read through the instructions before you begin work.

Also, keep the learning objectives for the course you will teach at the University of Sparkwimville in mind as you prepare your assessment:

• Identify the elements of a supply chain.
• Describe the challenges of coordinating a supply chain.
• Explain the role of the supply chain in enabling business competitiveness.
• Recommend a framework for supply chain management.
• Analyze contemporary trends and issues in effective supply chain management.

Write a script for your welcome video to help you prepare for your video and serve as a valuable resource for students who cannot engage with the audio or autogenerated captions of your Zoom video. For a 2-4 minute video, your script will likely end up being 1-3 double-spaced pages.

Make sure you are using your script to practice before recording your video. Rehearsing will put you at ease, and your delivery will be more engaging if you appear to be speaking to your students directly.

Address the following points as you prepare your script, and make sure they are covered in your video:

• Make a brief introduction in which you describe yourself as a professional as well as your approach to the teaching this course.
• Explain the general course content and at least three current trends or issues in supply chain management as they apply across diverse business contexts and cultures.
  • Use the readings from class, sources found via the Topic Exploration Quickstart Literature Guide: Global Operations & Supply Chain Management, and your own searching of the scholarly and practitioner literature to inform and support the trends or issues you choose.
    • Include any resources you use to support your video in an APA-formatted references list with your submission.
• Present an overview of course policies, expectations, how students should contact you, and where students can access this information for future reference.
  • You do not have to create the additional course policy and expectation documentation, but you should tell your students where to find student policies in your online classroom.
• Convey the key course takeaways to students in a way that is relevant to their current and future professional lives.
  • Remember, adult learners are often most motivated when information is presented to them in a way that highlights how they can use new learning to make their personal and professional lives better nownot just after they have finished their degree.