Project

Title:

Building a Collaborative Learning Environment to Engage MIS 438 Students and MIS Curriculum

Introduction and Background

Traditional forms of teaching and learning face significant challenges today because of the rapid advances in information technology. We have moved away from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy where patrons are expected to be well versed with the knowledge tools. Moreover, in this new world knowledge is dispersed among a wider band of sources. In this environment learning requires collaboration and teaching beckons facilitation. A key question is, how do we transform college education, specifically college teaching and learning, to avail of the emerging opportunities.

A recent NSSE[1] survey identified five key factors for academic success, namely, enhancing academic challenge,  improving student-faculty interactions, making easier active and collaborative learning, and enriching educational experiences through technology, internships, team work, and senior level capstone courses among many. Further, a survey of Iowa State students showed that over the last two years collaborative learning (47%), enriching educational experiences (39%), and student-faculty interactions (40%) have remained well below 50%. These shortcomings present an opportunity to redesign of our curricula.

The challenges posed call for changes in instructional approaches that suggest a move away from instructor-led to instructor-facilitated learning where students become responsible for their own learning. In this context, learning relies largely on collaboration and interaction among students, faculty, and others as they work together to accomplish specific learning objectives.  ISU 2005-2010 strategic plan emphasizes the importance of fostering an environment in which undergraduate, graduate and professional education is strengthened through innovation, collaboration and continuous improvement. Collaboration and knowledge sharing is also becoming the norm in the corporate domain.

Purpose

Management Information Systems (MIS) is a young major at Iowa State. Information systems technology and information management are vital to the success of any modern organization as they enable business processes, maintain organizational memory, and provide predictive decision support capabilities. Students of MIS learn the technology and explore new and innovative ways to apply it in broader business contexts. Much of the learning takes place in a shared, group environment with a constant need to replenish their technology, business, and interpersonal skills. Internships, team work, collaboration, and frequent interaction with faculty and external resources are essential for academic success. Unlike other majors in the Business College, an MIS major (200 students a year) must finish the capstone course (MIS 438) in their senior year. A set of prerequisite courses ensures that core concepts are synthesized and applied in the course. With rapid changes taking place both in the technology and business domains, there is a need to support and promote collaborative and interactive learning for the MIS student. We are proposing to build and adopt a collaborative learning system to improve the capstone course.

Model

The proposed collaborative learning system, My Collaborative Learning Environment (MyCLE), is informed by theories of learning popular in education. It is specifically informed by the social theory of learning called Communities of Practice[1] . See Fig. 1 below for a visual representation of this theory.

Figure 1.  Confluences of Forces on Learning (concept and illustration by Rex Heer)

 As the above illustration depicts, learning is a formation (and a transformation) of learner’s identity[2] and occurs when the individual learner engages with his/her community of practice.  Learning is thus supported by a confluence of individual and community forces.

The My Collaborative Learning Environment (MyCLE) system would allow learners to engage with their community in several ways by providing them multiple lines of access (see Figure 2) to knowledge resources distributed within and outside of their communities. The system would provide capabilities to store, maintain, and share personal, work group, and community information and knowledge artifacts. These artifacts represent evidences of learning and moreover may be used to improve subsequent learning and assessment by self and others. The system should enable anyplace, anytime, any device, access. For example, increased mobility and pervasiveness of mobile computing devices (laptops, PDA, smart phones, etc.) should be a consideration in the final design. 

Figure 2. Mock up of MyCLE showing lines of access (illustration by Rex Heer)