Reflections On Developing And
Using Blended Courses In An IS
Program
Dr Don Petkov
Professor and Coordinator of IS,
Business Administration/ BIS,
Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), Willimantic CT
petkovd@easternct.edu
ISECON Conf 2007
Overview of this presentation
1.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 noncredit 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 relicensed 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.
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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 nontraditional 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.
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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 nontraditional 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.
ISECON Conf 2007