ISECON Conf 2007

Reflections On Developing And Using Blended Courses

In An IS Program

Dr Don PetkovProfessor and Coordinator of IS,

Business Administration/ BIS,

Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), Willimantic CT

petkovd@easternct.edu

ISECON Conf 2007

Overview of this presentation1.INTRODUCTION

2. OUR METHODOLOGY RELATED LESSONS

3. WHAT DID WE LEARN ON TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES

4. LESSONS ON FACULTY ISSUES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF COURSE DEVELOPMENT

5. SOCIETAL ISSUES REFLECTIONS

ISECON Conf 2007

1. Introduction• History of the Business Information Systems

(BIS) program at ECSU which was approved in January 2003.

• How the development of the four CD /WebCT based courses evolved :• 2004 May- Initial talks and start of work• 2004 December – BUS205 Management of

Business Information• 2005 February – completion of BIS370 Systems

Analysis and Design and BIS361• 2006 February – completion of BIS450 Database

and a new version of BIS370 Systems Analysis• 2006 January – April – audio conferencing and

attempts at using Breese in BIS461 IS Strategy in a distributed classroom including a Groton site.

• 2006 - 2008 – variety of offerings

ISECON Conf 2007

The aim of this presentation• To share our experiences in developing

multimedia materials in the BIS program and offering various types of classes using those.

• To outline a potential way forward to use such materials- with technology enabling us to serve flexibly a dispersed student population located in small groups and working concurrently with a campus based class.

ISECON Conf 2007

The guiding goal of our work• By developing WebCT and multimedia

courses we wanted to reach out to more students from the Navy and Groton.

• A cohort of the BGS in BIS was formed by the School of Cont Ed. Some lessons from its evolution over 24-30 months:• The cohort size was small- only 10-12• Some students attended classes on the main

campus as well• In the future it is more likely to get occasional

additions to the BIS program in Groton and Rockville instead of a cohort – then the question is “Can we ignore their needs?”.

ISECON Conf 2007

What criteria drive the decision to offer a course

The policy challenges to higher education in implementing the necessary transformation towards implementing blended learning are grouped by Turoff (2006) into

• methodological issues, • technology issues,• faculty issues, and • societal issues.

The same four dimensions suggested by Turoff (2006) will serve as an organizing framework for our discussion.

ISECON Conf 2007

2. OUR METHODOLOGY RELATED LESSONS

On the generic Course Design Process:

• Step 1. Analysis of the learner population

• Step 2. Identify the desired learning outcomes or course objectives

• Step 3. Identify the learning activities to achieve the course objectives

• Step 4. Identify the course design options and technologies to be used

http://www.rit.edu/~609www/ch/faculty/cdopt.htm#BEFORE

ISECON Conf 2007

Step 1. Analysis of the learner population – our lessons

• Regarding the characteristics of adult learners.

• Regarding the lack of basic technological preparedness of the adult learners and of the day time students – is it a myth that the current generation is more technologically savvy than the previous one? In some aspects it is true but not related to the use of MS Excel or Access.

• Regarding how easy is WebCT: Nobody can be expected to know how to use WebCT – hence the need for the video guides that we developed and the need for a future non-credit introductory course on basic skills needed for it.

ISECON Conf 2007

Step 2. Identify the desired learning outcomes or course objectives

• These are defined in the BIS program that was approved in January 2003 and re-licensed by the CT Dept of Higher Education in February 2005.

• Our belief: The classes for non-traditional students cannot have different goals and objectives from those for traditional students and they need to have the same quality.

ISECON Conf 2007

Step 3. Identify the learning activities to achieve the course objectives

• BIS courses involve hands on work, team projects, critical thinking, skills enabling active learning.

• The learning activities were derived from the analysis of the characteristics of adult learners and also from the standard recommendations for IS Curricula by ACM/AIS.

ISECON Conf 2007

Step 4.Course Design Implications (partly after Janicki and Liegle, 2001)

• Instruction designed for adults tends to be more effective if it is learner-centered than if it is instructor-centered. – everything was designed having in mind the student, how will they see the course artifacts and use them.

• The instructor must maintain a careful balance between the presentation of new material and its applications, discussion and participation among students - we used home assignments, miniprojects, team project, discussion groups, email, chat stressing interaction within study groups and with the instructor.

ISECON Conf 2007

4. Course Design Implications (Continued)• We adopted a standard structure of the

WebCT courses for all IS subjects at ECSU – as a consequence the learning curve for students in various subjects was reduced,

• We developed for non-traditional students also video lectures on CDs using Tegrity and Camtasia (we use CDs instead of streaming video as few have fast Internet)

• We started with audio conferencing in Jan/06 and used Breese (Adobe Connect) for video conferencing with the idea of creating a distributed classroom with a remote lab in Groton, CT.

ISECON Conf 2007

3. WHAT DID WE LEARN ON TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES The technology we used besides Adobe

Connect was diverse:

• WebCT campus edition and subsequently WebCT Vista;

• TEGRITY software for developing video lectures;

• CAMTASIA software for combining voice and screen capture,

• The Library electronic course repository system.

ISECON Conf 2007

Our lessons from using Tegrity and Camtasia

• The hardship of talking in front of a camera;• The packages are constantly improving but

still there is no flexible transition from one mode of operation to another.

• Incomplete documentation and some bugs.• No proper backup and version control to

reduce the maintenance effort.• Rudimentary time line editing only is provided

by both packages.• Inability to integrate material from different

recording sessions.

ISECON Conf 2007

On the implementation of new infrastructure:

• It is not enough to demonstrate a concept. Rigorous testing is needed to verify the functionality of the infrastructure and how it copes with stress loads at peak times.

• A technician for the BIS program is needed to reduce the burden of performing the above activities by faculty.

• We have enjoyed the cooperation with ITS staff who did their best to meet our requests in spite of their limited resources. Improved results could be obtained through a better coordination between the units of ITS for successful delivery of reliable academic computing infrastructure, involving not just the staff of the Academic Computing Unit (the Center for Instructional Technology at ECSU) but every other unit in it - as might be needed in a situation.

ISECON Conf 2007

4. LESSONS ON FACULTY ISSUES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF

COURSE DEVELOPMENT • Our work was facilitated by the university

wide initiative to introduce WebCT. The Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) organized extensive training in 2003-4 for all ECSU faculty on using the technology. Relevant materials and books on on-line education were provided by its staff.

• We examined carefully the criteria for evaluation of the best published WebCT courses in the annual competition organized by that company (now part of Blackboard) and the best on-line teaching practices according to the literature

ISECON Conf 2007

What management steps were undertaken:• The School of Cont Education and the VP

Academic Affairs negotiated with the union the conditions of an agreement on the development of such courses and also on delivering such courses.

• Issues of copyright had to be resolved, leaving copyright with the instructor but allowing ECSU to use the materials as necessary.

• Issues of rate of remuneration and consideration of whether delivering such courses within or outside the standard teaching load had to be resolved.

• Issues of module duration and cohort based delivery for the program had to be considered.

ISECON Conf 2007

On the management of course development

• Current process model: CIT is an initiator of using a certain technology, it promotes it, demonstrates the concept, provides training and support, as a whole it does usually an excellent job with respect to the above; faculty are encouraged verbally to participate and sometimes there are incentives for developing courses like in our case (3 FLCs per course), user discussion forums are formed.

• How are potential courses selected – on the basis of their perceived value to potential students, provided that their numbers can justify economically a cohort of students to be formed within a program.

ISECON Conf 2007

Several disconnects in the existing process model of course development:

• there is no incentive for deep penetration in academic practice of new instructional technology for its ownership to be taken over by the faculty;

• the interests of academic computing technical staff inevitably tend to move on to the next emerging new technology over some time;

• no steering committee exists at university level or at the level of the CSU System to advise on both academic and administrative computing;

• the university annual report contains only a small general item on distance learning and on-line materials.

• there are some faculty related inhibitors to the promotion of technology use by a higher percentage of instructors.

• the technology of the distributed classroom is an attractive idea but it needs very hard work in order to be implemented, adequate testing, maintenance.

ISECON Conf 2007

5. SOCIETAL ISSUES REFLECTIONS• If no one can offer a course among several

competing institutions just for the above economic reason, it is hard to estimate the damage for the society if it loses potential new IT experts who had no opportunity to study.

• The recent attention among universities to localness (see Mayadas and Picciano, 2007) is another factor that supports the need to care about better fulfilling the social role of universities in general and of blended education in particular.

• Computing programs are small these days and they value usually every student in their strive to grow.

ISECON Conf 2007

Do we treat the students as customers?

According to Turoff (2006) consumerism will force all those concerned with the quality and utility of a higher education to focus on the quality and effectiveness of the instructors.

Hence the need to improve assessment of student learning and quality control in blended courses.

ISECON Conf 2007

Conclusion• The challenge is to introduce the principles of

flexible, lean manufacturing (anytime, anywhere, serving big and small customers) to universities when it comes to teaching non-traditional students – in our opinion :

- every potential student matters for the future of society;

- the distributed classroom technology exists already;

-we cannot afford to cater only for large groups and exclude small ones.

ISECON Conf 2007

Conclusion (cont)

It is necessary to implement processes and establish structures enabling faculty and academic management to become more active in the wider usage of technology in classes for day and non-traditional students that allow flexible course offerings to a diverse student population through blended learning.

ISECON Conf 2007

Future related work in BIS at ECSU• Continue our work since 2004 on various

aspects of assessment of student learning in the BIS program in cooperation with our colleagues in BIS at CCSU.

• Extend assessment work to the distributed classroom environment.

• Integrate our work on continuous improvement of the IS curriculum and our teaching methods with the diffusion of best practices in assessment and use of technology in blended learning to serve better our students.