Hello guys, I wanted to comment about a great alternative I found for the Operations Management requirement at EC. The course is called Operations Management for Organizational Success offered by Wichita Area Technical College (watc.edu) It is an 8 week class and does not involve math calculations until the last part of the course (the last 4 chapter or the last 2 weeks). It has a Midterm and a Final Exam both multiple choice. Midterm has 55 questions and Final has 80 questions, open book and unproctored. Reminded me a lot of Straighterline. If you read the material and make a copy of the glossary in the back of the book you should do fine on your tests. Doing that left me with enough free time to look in the book for the answers I didn't know and I scored 91 in the midterm and 90 in the final. The final is more difficult and there were several questions on Constraint Theory so make sure you study that well. There is also something really cool: You have 2 attempts for each test, so if you don't get the score you want, you have a 2nd chance. There are 6 written papers called "abstracts", they are 2-3 page reviews of Operation Management articles that you choose freely and comment on the impact of them on you and how would you apply them. Pretty easy to do. I was done with them in less than 2 hours. There are 4 videos to watch average 12 minutes long, mostly of manufacturing plants and each video comes with a set of questions to answer (3 to 5). Answers are straight from the videos, you should be done with these in about an hour or so. There are 2 application exercises which is the late part of the class, when you have to use math to solve production/operation problems. A bit more challenging but not super difficult. Finally, there are 6 discussion boards, you are required to post an initial post and do 3 replies to your classmates. They are pretty simple, should not take more than 30 mins to do a decent post and reply to your 3 classmates. The cost of the class was $410 including fees. However for non-residents the price is a bit higher but it depends on the state and the difference is not huge, I think 15% more. You should not have a problem getting a solid B in the class following my directions, if you want an A make sure you have read the material well so you can get a high grade on the exams. The teacher was very experienced as she worked many years in manufacturing for Boeing, if you have a question she will have the answers, she is a very valuable resource. I hope this helps many of you get Operations Management out of the way much faster. Best wishes to all!
