By Melinda Barber from Raleigh, North Carolina 3 months ago Completed

Background: Former Marketing Manager, MBA, Stay-home mom for decade -- trying to update knowledge base.

I registered for An Introduction to Operations Management, a nine-week MBA course. The professor, a very personable German native from the University of Pennsylvania, conducted weekly lectures from his university office. I viewed them, at my convenience, from the comfort of my laptop. There were periodic Q&A’s throughout the lecture to keep you engaged – I later learned that they track the responses to these questions. The professor spent an appropriate amount of time on each concept, was upbeat in his delivery, and shared interesting anecdotes.

After watching the lectures, there were practice problems with solutions and homework assignments, which could be worked offline but had to be submitted online by the due date. When I had a question, I simply posted it on the discussion forum and a teaching assistant or fellow student would help me through it. The final exam was broken into sections, which could be completed and submitted separately – it was long, but not unreasonable. Midway through the course, our professor offered an optional challenge, which gave us the opportunity to apply our knowledge to a workplace or personal experience. This one-page submission was randomly distributed to at least five other students for peer review. In turn, I had to evaluate at least five papers.

The course outline estimated a weekly time commitment of five to seven hours. I probably averaged ten hours per week. However, with a final score of 97.8%, I received a Statement of Accomplishment with Distinction. According to the professor, 87,000 people signed up for the course, about half participated to some extent, 7,000 completed the course, and 4,000 received a Statement of Accomplishment. Individuals from every continent, except Antarctica, participated in this new-age classroom – half of the students live outside of North America.

I am the product of a brick and mortar education and have always questioned the legitimacy of online education. This experience has changed my opinion: it really seems to be a quality option for disciplined adults who are committed to learning but limited on time. My Coursera endeavor provided me with new business tools, exercised dormant parts of my brain, boosted my confidence level (not too old to learn), and gave me something fresh to add to my LinkedIn page. I would certainly recommend it – well worth the time, nothing to lose. College students should consider this program prior to taking a challenging course. I will no doubt take another Coursera course.

By Patty 4 months ago Completed

I felt a high degree of personal satisfaction after completion of this course. I thought the lectures were well-organized and easy to understand. I appreciated that practice problems matched homework problems which matched the final - no tricks in this class. I believe the information was very complementary to my project management training and I hope to put the knowledge into practice on the job.

By Fernando Cabo Diaz from Aviles, Asturias. Spain 4 months ago Completed

Mr. Terwiesch & his team's Course was really a wonderful experience to take. Having worked on the financial side of industrial operations for more than 12 years, i had never been able to so clearly grasp and see reflected in a learning experience as i have here.

I therefore hihgly recommend the course and its contents. Even if you have previous knowledge on some of the subjects, it'll prove revealing and most useful. The appropiated combination of teaching tools and University of Pennsilvanya's ressources in an open course make up for a powerful and deffinitively winning alternative to other educational offers on the same issue.

Special mention to the teacher and well managed organisation of the on-line sessions, exercises, exams, cases/challenges, on-line community forums, etc. In sum, eager for more and thankful for having been shown a true "Blue-Ocean" in learning.

By Jenny from Toronto, Ontario 4 months ago Completed

An excellent course. You learn a lot when you put your effort in. One of the best courses I have attended so far, even better than other paid courses I have attended before. Thank you Professor Christian Terwiesch, Christian, Doris, Hessam and the supporting team; and last but not the least Coursera. I will certainly participate more and keep in contact with Coursera. Thank you for making all this happened!

By Collin Ang from Singapore 4 months ago Completed

Prof Christian is a very good lecturer and he makes difficult concepts easy to understand and gives ample practice questions to help us understand the course material.

He also gives quite a fair bit of insights into industry data and practices and also demonstrate how the concepts in operations management are applied in the real world.

A highly recommended course.

By Shaw Tham from Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur 4 months ago Completed

Course was free, not not easy. Very informative. Tutorial and regular assessment encourages to find the right answers without deny you for the first trial. Certain part tends to be quite difficult compare to other modules. But overall, I look forward to explore deeper with this course.

By Jima Ngei from Port Harcourt, Rivers 4 months ago Completed

It was excellent, beautiful, challenging, rewarding, engaging and fun. I guess that says it all..but it definitely wasnt a walkover. It was demanding. A great course in the field and as a first experience to MOOCs very educative.

By Tiago Francisco Santos from Campinas, Sao Paulo 4 months ago Completed

the course was very useful for me in my work
I met many interesting and intelligent people.
the teacher is great, the lessons are moderated.
recommend any course with this professor

By Faiho Song from Canton, Guangdong, China 4 days ago Taking Course Now

a nice course with the basic knowledge of management. A good course for the greenhands. love this course, and the explanation for the assignment and practice is excellent!

By Maureen Seng Taung from London, England 15 days ago Completed (Partially)

This course helped me a lot as I am doing my final MBA project. I didn't have any operation management background and I couldn't understand even when I read the textbooks. But as I took the lectures and I came to catch up the basic concept. The professor is really good at explaining concepts using examples which we can easily understand. I'll highly recommend it to anybody who wants to know more about the business operations.

By Jan Marius Evang from Oslo 3 months ago Completed

Very interesting course. I enjoyed it much. Now I feel I know much more about why companies and procedures are managed the way they are.

By Robert Adams 3 months ago Completed

Thank you for offering your expertise and operations management course through coursera. I attended Wharton in the 80's graduating in 1986. So it was very excited to find your course and be able to have that connection to Penn and Wharton again. Your delivery and course material were excellent. I learned a ton of stuff from you and I would like to learn even more. Thank you and your staff and Penn and Wharton for being on the leading edge of education and moving the efficient frontier in education into a different dimension.

By Samir Arman 3 months ago Completed

Wonderful course. Plenty of real and valuable examples.
Prof. Terwiesch's method of teaching is great and the pace is just right.
This was a completely new subject for me and surprisingly it was a joy to follow the course.
Highly recommended!

By Hernan Garritano from Tigre, Buenos Aires 3 months ago Completed

The proffesor is excellent, he make us easy this hard topic with funny but real daily cases to understand, measure and improve operational performancies to increase customer and shareholders satisfaction at the same time, trying to add creativity to move forward the efficient frontier.

A lot of things are pendings because not all the cases were analyzed, so an advance course is needed to complete the learning phase.

By Vassilis from Athens, Attica Greece 3 months ago Completed

I'm a mechanical engineer with twenty years project & sales (and a few teaching) experience, I find the course more than I expected, intrest and helpfull, not only in bussines but and in real. Sure you see life with a different approach after you start and of course ending the course. It was my first coursera lessons, and I have advertise it to all my friends and students as a nice think to do.Big thanks to the instructor Christian Terwiesch and his team, when ever you give an advance course please don't forget us (send us an email).

By Julie from Seattle, Washington 3 months ago Completed

I would not recommend enough this class. It was my first Coursera experience, and I would definitely attend to other class via this platform.
The class was very interesting, well organized, clear and with "real life" studies, funny too. I've learnt a lot.
Thank you to M. Terwiesch and co-workers, and Coursera team for this experience.

By Robert Samuel 3 months ago Completed

I have been in business for 35 years selling and distributing consumer goods to retailers of all levels. Despite my years of experience, the Introduction to Operations Management course gave me new insight into my customers’ management practices and a better understanding of my business practices.

Professor Terwiesch gives clear, passionate, organized, motivating and efficient lectures. These lectures, in tandem with the excellent textbook (which was supplementary reading), were ultimately very effective in supporting my learning. I am now eager to put the material into practice so that I can offer my customers greater value. In addition, I am keen to take an advanced operations management course.

I highly recommend Professor Terwiesch’s course for anybody who is interested in moving their business towards operational excellence.

By rick deakin from new york NY 3 months ago Completed

Great course- Professor Terwiesch displayed much knowledge, and a little dry German wit, in communicating many basic tenets of new millenium, post crash, thinking on current best practices for operations. Clearly more directed to production line style companies with repeatable, practicable (is that a real word?) routines, it breaks operations down into core sections; processes (including 'lean' methods, quality control (including 6 sigma), adding choice to services and products, and responsiveness in general. My 2nd Coursera course- FREE tuition from the world's best universities? I'm all in.

By David Robb from Auckland, Auckland 3 months ago Completed

The course was highly effective in capturing the essentials of operations management in a very succinct manner. The video material was well structured, insightful, and provided great business illustrations and examples. The tutorial sessions were also helpful in assisting learning. Themes of the course (e.g., managing in uncertain environments) were emphasised.

Christian's wry sense of humour broke some of the difficult sessions. The instantaneous feedback on assignments was great, but I would have liked to see a few more questions (and indeed lecture content) on more qualitative aspects of the subject - but these, along with case studies and simulations are more difficult to provide in this environment.

I would highly recommend this course. Although I've taught OM for two decades in three continents I was privileged to learn something on both content and process. But mostly it was refreshing and challenging to contemplate how to respond to this technology, which as Christian suggests, is moving the performance frontier, i.e,. is disruptive.

By Adeela from Doha, Ad Dawhah 4 months ago Completed

I thought this was a great course. My background is in international relations, but I had been thinking about pursuing an MBA and working in the private sector. My main concern was that I wouldn't be able to catch up with others and my lack of knowledge on business. This course was a great introduction. It was challenging, but I enjoyed the homework assignments and the multiple chances to answer a problem correctly make you work harder and actually help you to understand the material more thoroughly. The professor is amazing and he and his entire team were really dedicated to students and their learning experience - somewhat rare to find these days! If he offers it again, take it!

By Everboleh 4 months ago Completed

Prof Terwiesch was very good in each of the modules covered to engage us to learn and to excite us with curiosity to calculate those seemingly very complex and difficult operational problems.

The greatest thing is, one needs not to have much prior knowledge to take this course.

By Jacquie Ashton from Cornwall 4 months ago Completed

This is the first business course I have taken and I did it out of interest and a desire to know more. I found the whole course fascinating and looked forward to listening to the lectures and trying the problems. I learnt a great deal and was keen to put it into practice so the operations challenge was a really useful opportunity to apply some skills and ideas to a real life situation. It is a great course which is well structured and extremely well taught.

By Emmanuel 4 months ago Completed

This course by Prof Christian Terwiesch is one of a kind; rich, informative and pragmatic with adequate illustrations. This is the best online coursei've taken. Try it and you will never regret your action.

By Ahmed Haroun Sabry from Casablanca, Grand Casablanca 4 months ago Completed

A great course for those who want to have a different view of operations opportunities and want to make their waiting in queues a funnier task.

By Vikas from Bloomington, Illinois 4 months ago Completed

I would like to write my review as per the questions given as helpers:

What did you like/not like about this course?
I liked everything about the course, specially the way Prof. Terwiesch delivers the lectures. I have not understood anything better in my life from an instructor before this. Thanks a lot Prof. Terwiesch. Sometimes I felt that the length of the course could be reduced, but that is just my perspective.

Was the course different than what you expected?
Nopes, not at all. I was expecting stuff like Lean and Six Sigma in that (I had read about them earlier) and actually the course had to offer much more.

How could the course be improved?
May be some more real world examples.I don;t think so that such a perfect course can be improved more; it is not easy to move from 99 to 100 right?

How does this course compare to others?
I have not taken other course at coursera, but from other certifications/courses that I did online, this was far far better! Thanks again to Prof. Terwiesch for making it so awesome!

Do you suggest any courses as prerequisites?
Definitely. Actually I would suggest this to all people taking MBA too, after all we are getting the same knowledge that we would get if we are at Wharton right? Besides this, I am sure that this knowledge can be used in practical applications as has been done by people who participated in Operations Challenge.

Again I would like to thank our Guru, Respected Prof. Terwiesch and also Coursera for giving all the students such a wonderful gift.

regards,
Vikas.
Process Consultant
Six Sigma (Green) Belt Certified.

By Gildo Chan from Jacarei 4 months ago Completed

For me, was fantastic!!!!
I do recommend this course and everyone from this teacher.
He is smart, easy language, dedicated and very very clever in his methodology

By George Leung 4 months ago Completed

This course will give you a concise introduction to operations management. Very well organized and well delivered. This topic could have been boring but the course is delivered well. Thanks to Professor Terwiesch and Coursera.

By kishore Patil from Bangalore, Karnataka 4 months ago Completed

It was first online course, which I completed successful.
Great experience having video lectures, home work, exams, final exam & operation challenge.
They way Professor Christian taught us is really great, he used examples from different business sectors.
I think it would have been great if they have provided opportunities to ask queries to Professor ( I can understand he can't answers all the students where count is in thousands )
Great Experience
Looking forward for next grade
thanks
Kishore

By Syed Aslam from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu 4 months ago Completed

Wonder full course to complete, if you are really interested in management. the entire course structure was well organized.and it can be taken by any person with no knowledge any management studies.

By sisou2013 from Rabat, Rabat-Sale-Zemmour-Zaer 4 months ago Completed

nice course the materials are wonderful ! very useful! the assignment are very useful it helps to master the course

By Dorin Boerescu from Bucharest, Bucuresti 4 months ago Completed (Partially)

Great experience, I learned a lot of useful things for my business! During and after the course I started to work on several ways to improve my team's efficiency.

I'm managing an online advertising business, and some of the notions used were completely new for me - but in a good way.
Congrats and keep up the good work!

By Darmarakis Mihalis 4 months ago Completed

A "see through" glance in Bussiness Operations. The analogy of theory and practical examples is great, the course completion would be much more difficult with all these mathematical examples if the team haven't spent so much effort previously. Maybe some parts of video lectures could take place in real world operations...Excellent work from Mr Terwiesch and his team.

By Andre D'Cruz from Melbourne, Victoria 4 months ago Completed

The course was well prepared and presented with very interesting and challenging content.

Highly recommend this course to anyone that works in any facet of operations.

By Vered Westell 4 months ago Completed

Prof. Christian Terwiesch conveys this course in the most professional manner. I have taken another course with Coursera at the same time, and unintentionally I had to opportunity to compare both teachers. I was truly impressed with Christian's teaching style, organisation and commitment. The lectures are short and full of purpose, exercises follow to the point what have been covered in class and classes have a personal touch to them - of course Professor's charisma and dry sense of humor help great deal.

By Maria Tounta 4 months ago Completed

Excellent course well planned from the side of the prof. harder than I expected but lots of material to practice and internalize the subject matter. Highly recommended !!!!

By Mark Suter from Los Angeles, California 4 months ago Completed

This course was filled with engaging lectures and challenging practice and homework questions. As a fundamentals class, you should be prepared to learn many basic components of operations management, many of which are formula-driven. Comfort with algebra and working with formulas is an absolute must. The professor does a very nice job of discussing the quantitative aspects of the concepts by also applying them to real situations in which he has been involved. I highly recommend the course and Prof. Terwiesch.

By marty kubalanza from Western Springs, Illinois 4 months ago Completed

Having been out of the academic world for a number of years I was looking forward to the opportunity to take a university course.
The course exceeded my expectations.
The quality of the video and the overall material was unbelievable.
I have attended in person education/training with a significant price tag that was not as polished and not as effective.
Going into the course I was not sure what to expect so my expectations were light.
With that said the enthusiasm of Christian and the clarity of the material were exceptional.
As to improvements –
access to the material prior to viewing the lecture sessions would be a significant improvement. Once the material was posted typically a week after the videos were online I would watch the videos a second time and was able to focus more on the content and less on the action of note taking.
Course was the best online course I have taken. We had tried a number of online course concepts while I was at CSC and typically encountered performance issues.
Though the math was not exceptionally difficult this is where I spent the majority of my time on the homework sessions.
From the material I understood the desired outcome – getting there was the challenge

By T A M E R . E M A M from Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 4 months ago Completed (Partially)

this is an amazing course, as i have never been in to the world of Operations management with details, this course really do offer new way of understanding . how ever, you need to keep in mind that it is a fast tempo for firts timer`s

By Brian Shaw from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 4 months ago Completed

The course helped me to understand how seemingly difficult to measure processes could be expressed in mathematical terms. This will be useful in my work to maximize productivity and efficiency.

By Aung Myo Myint from Yangon, Burma 4 months ago Completed

the course can be applied in your operations, although I thought a bit more extensive and detailed course will be great. Christian and the team worked very cohesively and all the lectures are easy to follow up. Especially, when it is with subtitles. Thank you so much, Christian and the team! (:

By Rajiv Nagpal from Pilani, Rajasthan 4 months ago Completed

University of Pennsylvania's online offering of An Introduction to Operations Management was indeed a great learning experience. The video lectures were were concise and engaging. The examples provided from real world situations provided better understanding of the subject matter. The practice problems and the homework assignments were just right to help apply one's knowledge after learning from the lectures. The modules were well organised and followed a logical sequence. However, I suggest some of the topics, such as Quality be dealt with a little greater detail, with a little more focus on current trends.
All in all, Mr. Terwiesch made the distance of thousands of miles feel really short and provided a very fruitful experience.

By John Johnson from Asheville, North Carolina 4 months ago Completed

This course was a bit out of my area, and my first experience with a business class. I found this introduction to process analysis easy and practical. It was a good break from the intensive mathematical classes I have been taking, and yet I am able to apply the ideas to many areas in my employment.

Perhaps the most valuable part of the course is the practice problems. The instructor provided a set of the problems, which used the ideas from the lectures in different ways. In addition, solutions were provided as well as an optional long lecture where the professor works out the problems. The graded assignments were similar to, but not exactly the same as, the practice problems.

I recommend this class to anyone who might become a manager, even in the service industry.

By Robert Michaels from Andover, Massachusetts 4 months ago Not Completed

I found the course to be excellent. I joined late and did not complete it but I watched all the lectures. I wish Professor Terwiesch had been on the faculty at the Wharton School when I was there 28 years ago.

By Chesco from Valencia, Valencia 4 months ago Completed

I had already studied the basics of operations management, but with this course I have successfully deepened my knowledge about the issue. The course is adapted to be able to be taken without any previous knowledge, but takes you to the hot spot in operations management and gives a wide view of what does OM mean. I highly encourage anyone willing to learn more about this matter to take this short and thorough course.

By Ondrej Fedorcak from Rpety 4 months ago Completed

Professor Terwiesch has nice english, so I understood almost everything. He talks precisely and in good terms. I like his expression. The course is big benefit for me. I learned and repeated a lot of stuff and I recomend this course to everyone who is interested in operations management.

By Dilioha Igbo 4 months ago Not Completed

Really enjoyed the videos and the explanation. On the contrary, I found the coursework quite different from the examples used in the videos.

By Ologun Korede from Lagos 4 months ago Completed

The Operations Management course was a well structured and useful one. The tutoring was great and time scheduling was at its very best. I was able to gather real knowledge on core principles of Operations Management.

By Michał Łada from Manchester, England 4 months ago Completed

Very helpful in my current work. Great content and structure. May sound a little weird but I was actually looking forward to new lectures. Engaging, challenging and rewarding (someone wrote that already). And definitely A LOT OF FUN. I strongly recommend this course to everyone who wants to learn more about operations or simply brush up on what they already know. Thanks Christian for your hard work and for stretching my business related horizons.

'Best'

By Alfredo Stefani from Cologne, Germany 4 months ago Completed

I'm in sales and took part to the course to know a little bit more about the production's side of a company.
Well, this was very interesting, once you start seeing everything around you with Operation Manager eyes, you can spot inefficiencies and bottlenecks. You don't need to be in production, I applied the principles lernt to emprove my office work.
A course to recommend,
Alfredo Stefani

By Haweti from Melbourne 4 months ago Taking Course Now

Fantastic Job done by Christian! I highly recommend it! I found the course to be well organized and thorough. I particularly liked the explanation of the course presentation.