This study was designed to: (a) develop an inventory control system achievement test for students in a foodservice management information systems course, (b) develop a self-instructional module on inventory control systems, and (c) evaluate the module using a nonequivalent control group experimental design. The experimental treatments were lecture and self-instruction; both treatments were developed based on content analyses of leading textbooks. The identified content areas were receiving, storing, issuing, inventory control, inventory valuation and inventory control computer systems. An achievement test, an attitude inventory, and a demographic questionnaire also were designed to assess the effects of the experimental treatments;A sample of 105 students responded to the test after 3 hours of instruction on inventory control systems. The test was reliable as indicated by a Kuder-Richardson 20 value of 0.84 and was judged content valid. The attitude inventory consisted of 17 positively and negatively stated items;To measure the effectiveness of the instructional methods, an experiment was conducted with two classrooms. The module was utilized by the self-instruction group. For the lecture group, the six content areas were presented from outlines developed for the self-instructional module. The subjects consisted of 88 students, with 46 in the lecture group and 42 in the self-instruction group. All subjects completed a pretest, demographic questionnaire, and a posttest. The self-instructional group responded to an attitude inventory. Descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlations, and analysis of covariance were used to analyze the data;Because adjusted mean scores on the achievement posttest between the two experimental groups were significantly different with the mean scores for the self-instructional treatment being higher, the inventory control self-instruction method was judged at least equally as good as the lecture method. The students' responses to the attitude inventory showed that students in the self-instruction group had overall favorable attitudes toward the module. Therefore, the self-instructional method appears to be an effective innovation. Further use and study of this method for teaching college students and practitioners seem justified.