Helping students understand, recognize, and apply.
My teaching philosophy centers on three outcomes: clear and durable understanding, recognition of relevance, and application through reasoning. I pursue these outcomes through structured teaching, repeated engagement, realistic applications, and gradually increasing student independence.
Instructor of Record
Operations Management · Business Statistics · Spreadsheets, Data Visualization & Decision Analysis
Practicing Contract Negotiations with AI
Students negotiate a supply contract with an AI seller and receive AI-generated feedback on their performance. Initial student responses have been very positive.
Clear & Durable Understanding
I structure course material around clear learning goals, break complex ideas into manageable steps, and reinforce important concepts through repeated engagement, checks for understanding, and connections across topics.
Recognition of Relevance
I use cases, realistic business situations, and applied activities to help students recognize familiar concepts when they appear in unfamiliar settings rather than simply recalling textbook definitions.
Application Through Reasoning
I want students to become independent problem solvers. They practice selecting appropriate methods, explaining their reasoning, considering alternatives, and applying what they know beyond familiar problem formats.
Structure & Reinforcement
Learning Through Context
Guidance Toward Independence
Student groups repeatedly draw small random samples and calculate sample means. Once the class can see the distribution emerging, I formally introduce sampling distributions and the Central Limit Theorem, then reconnect those ideas later to confidence intervals and hypothesis testing.
Students work with scenarios involving prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure costs. Groups classify each situation and compare their reasoning, helping them recognize concepts beyond the examples in which they were originally introduced.
Students develop their own multi-stage decision problems, preferably from their own experiences, and solve them using decision trees. This requires them to decide how the method applies rather than simply reproduce a familiar exercise.
Practicing Contract Negotiations with AI
In this teaching-focused research project, students take on the role of a buyer and negotiate a supply contract with an AI agent acting as the seller. The instructor provides the prompt used to structure the negotiation, and students work toward securing appropriate contract terms.
The AI agent then provides feedback on the student’s negotiation performance. Initial student responses to the exercise have been very positive, and I am implementing another iteration in my Operations Management course this fall. We will present the results at the November 2026 Decision Sciences Institute conference and plan to submit the study to a teaching-focused journal thereafter. Through this project, I am exploring how AI can support practice-based learning of complex skills such as negotiation, judgment, and decision-making.
Understanding Students
I use a pre-course survey to better understand students' backgrounds, preparation, and expectations before the course develops.
Reflective Teaching
I maintain a teaching journal to record what worked, what did not, and my reflections. This helps me treat teaching as an iterative process rather than a fixed routine.
Responding to Students
I use student questions, feedback, and classroom responses to adjust explanations, pacing, examples, and instructional approaches when needed.
“Muhammad Omar Al–Zadid was a very good instructor, he clearly wanted us to learn and was always wanting to help us as much as he could. He was very fast at responding to emails, and was always asking if we understood the material.”
“Very nice and thoughtful professor. Makes the class environment easy to learn in and is very clear when walking through problems.”
“Very good at teaching the content in an easy way to understand, teaches the problems very step by step and organized easy to follow. Always takes the time to stop and ask the students if they understand, if they have any questions, and if he needs to do more examples so we can get it down.”
“Is very open to feedback and even made a change in how they presented lectures partway through the semester after receiving student feedback.”
“Good pace in class, would go over quality examples, slow down or go over something again if needed. And always offered extra help outside of class.”
Read more student comments
“Did a great job teaching the course, I learned a lot.”
“Super kind and understanding, You can tell he wants his students to succeed.”
“Great professor who is very smart.”
“He was really great. fast with email and always willing to help with any problems or questions. great guy.”
“Omar was helpful whenever I had questions and gave good instruction throughout the course.”
“Great Professor, Loved online exams, and extra credit lab”
“Great instructor, very nice and helpful.”
“He was very enthusiastic, kind, and helpful.”
“Super super nice instructor and taught a good class”
“Cool, smart and helpful.”
“Great professor, always around to help and made sure to help”
“Good professor that made learning the content easy.”
“Was helpful when asked and very accommodating/ understanding.”
“He is a fantastic instructor. He was always ready to answer student questions and give feedback. He also provided numerous opportunities for students to improve their grades.”
“Great professor who was patient and ensured that we had time to ask questions about the content provided.”
“Very helpful, knew how to explain concepts well.”
“He is there to help you when you email he reply right away”
“Very understanding and helpful, responds to emails in a timely manner and is informative about the class material when missed.”
“Omar is great at communicating and efficient when answering students questions.”
“Cared about his students and provided helpful feedback when needed.”
“Good professor, always willing to help, easy to contact. Professor Zadid did a good job explaining concepts.”
“I just wanted to say thank you so much for being such a great TA for MGTOP 215. I always understood the material a lot better when attending the labs and having you explain it. So thank you for being so patient with all of us this semester. Continue to be an amazing TA for more students to come.”