Issues with Simulation Class by Dr. Scanlan

I totally agree with all my classmates. I have the same consirn.

The classes was simply we doing presentations to the rest, and the professor rarely taught. Self-study with little hint, it's definitely not what we deserve:(

I've never seen that a Professor asked students to "give me a five if we enjoy the class, just don't do the evaluation if you are not satisfied, because it's not mandatory". It is outrageous and obviously not something that a professor feel comfortable to say in front of the whole class.

I think change professor for cohert 2 is unfair. Two classes should share the same resource.

Actually I don’t think I learn anything from this lesson. Insufficient pre-class preparation, simple class explanation. I don’t know what I could get.

I've never seen that a Professor asked students to "give me a five if we enjoy the class, just don't do the evaluation if you are not satisfied, because it's not mandatory". It is outrageous and obviously not something that a professor feel comfortable to say in front of the whole class.

It’s a consensus that the GSBM and all MSAA students are in the same community of interest. The more qualified and competitive we are, the better awareness and reputations this program will receive, and more and more excellent applicants will come in the long run. To establish and maintain this positive cycle is the top priority mission of GSBM. Now let’s put right or wrong aside, I think everybody can see it clearly, that there are indeed serious problems in this program. If not, there will not be so many students give complaints and grievance here. Obviously, this is a very critical moment. Students are expecting GSBM’s active actions in solving the problems. So, please pay enough attention and act actively.

I am sure that there is something wrong with the content and construction of the class, even not only for this one. I feel what I have learnt is not enough and basicly learnt from my classmates and myself, even my undergraduate professors would teach deeply and further in academic aspect. For this class, although we did a team project and learnt the software somehow, what we did in group always be little part of the whole project. Therefore, the totally thing we learnt is just a little bit, which is unbelievable for lectures of Master Degree. In this condition, what can we master? I believe the leaders of our school understand the career condition of our master students, is that really OK? We all want to change and give us as well as pepperdine a better future!

I totally agreed with the listed issues. I hope the school can take it seriously. Besides that, the school should focus more on MS programs, not solely on MBA programs regarding education quality and resources allocation. So far, it seems that MS programs are profit-oriented. All of the courses are introductory style which shouldn't be taught in grad school.

100% agreed with the issues listed on the petition. For the past seven weeks, students were required to do weekly report for their group project. The problem was that the professor didn’t even bother students spending four hours to do this EVERY SINGLE WEEK. He seemed enjoy letting students run the class so that he didn’t have to teach. Did he give feedback? Yes, he did but only on the small things such as presentation skills and things to include the final project. For our group, every time we asked him regarding the software we used to create models, he tended to dodge the question and never answered the question. In week 4, he said that he received so many emails regarding modeling questions and statistic questions and some of the questions shouldn’t be answered by him. He encouraged us to call the software developer if we had any problems with using the software. His attitude really let us down. For the following weeks, no one ever asked him question again. We paid tuition, so our purpose is to learn from and collaborate with the professor. Instead of getting education from the class, we had to learn by ourselves during the free time. Since we had assignments from the other three classes, the time for self-learning is limited. If he had taught us at least some of the software, it would be a lot more efficient for us to do the project. In the final week, he claimed that he is not an expert of the software. Since this course is called Simulation Modeling, so how come Pepperdine let a professor who doesn’t know or barely know how to use a software to teach us simulation modeling? He also said that the course is deemphasizing on software. However, how can anyone build and simulate models without knowing how to use software? The course is called SIMULATION MODELING!

It is really a serious problem.

Strongly agree

We need to take actions and problems need to be solved asap. Would love to hear from the Dean and academic executive if any changes could be made from the course this session that Pro.Scanlan will still be teaching.

It was unbelievable that after giving us very few lectures and little guidance for the whole session, Prof Scanlan spent about half an hour in the class telling us he was expecting a five in his evaluation, and made us do the eveluation during the class time. And he asked us to forget about the evaluation thing if we didn't like his class, because he didn't want low grades.

I cannot see any professional altitute of this professor.

The sentences in this letter are absolutely true and the same as what I want to say. We just want to learn more advanced skills so as to qualified for a good job and also raise the program's reputation.

I agreed with all the following issues stated, and I would like to add more details about his negative teaching manner. Once our group member asked him the assignments he assigned from the textbook, those are question about statistics, and he asked one of our classmates to be the volunteer to explained assignments to us. However, my teammates had different opinion with that classmate and asked professor Scanlan during the break. But when my teammates asked him about those statistical problems, he did not even look at the questions. He thought for a while and said "yeah, yeah I think your answer is correct" without explaining everything. Moreover, he mentioned the phononmenon that our classmates kept asking him questions about statistics during class, and he told us to google those questions or youtube questions instead of asking him "how to do this and how to do that"

Lack of in-depth feedback is the most important point. Effective feedback initiate further learning and correct current modeling process. I hope to spend the learning time more efftively.

I sincerely wish that Pepperdine University would take our outcomes and suggestions really seriously and respect students.