Project Implementation Plan

BMGN N340: Management Information Systems

Course Assignment 20%

Digital Narrative and Online Discussion

 

Digital Narrative	10%
Online Discussion	10%

  

Bara’a M. S. Yousuf

Faculty – Business and Information Technology | M.Sc., PMP, MCAD, PD Facilitator

Dubai Academic city, HCT, DMC

* 15825, UAE | ( +971 4 4038660 | 6 +971 4 3260303

Assignment1 Requirements

1. You’ll work in teams of 2-3 students.
2. Part1: Read Chapter 9 of your textbook to understand which Information Systems are available to help organizations achieve “Operational Excellence”. Categories: ERP, SCM and CRM. Notice that in each category, there are many IT companies offering different products for that category, example: in the ERP category some of the available products are Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and ORACLE ERP.
3. Select one of the systems you discovered in part1 to focus more on.
4. Part2: Identify an organization that has implemented the Enterprise Application selected by the group and explore the whole business case around the selected Enterprise Application investment, in a case study style.
5. Review any available resources on the selected system’s features/characteristics to better understand it and be able to talk about it.
6. Part3: Students will present their Assignment case study in a creative way as a Digital Narrative. No report or PowerPoint slides. Video, Prezi presentation, Cartoon, or other creative digital tools might be used. Check this website to better understand what a digital narratives are: http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/index.html
7. Part4: Share your group Digital Narrative with the rest of the class to comment on and Discuss. BbVista is most likely going to be used for this sharing. Your teacher might share with you some other medium to share your Digital Narrative in case a better one is identified.
8. All students should take part in the discussion to understand the other types of Enterprise Application better.
9. Make sure that your discussion includes and “not limited to” groups that worked on systems falling in the same category of your system. This is mainly to identify the pros and cons of using each product for certain business scenario.
10. The Assignment mark will be divided among the Digital Narrative and the Discussion parts.

Deliverables and Timelines

Part1: Chapter 9 read	25/Feb/2012	Proposed timeline
Part2: System and organization selected	3/Mar/2012	Proposed timeline
Part3: Digital Narrative published	17/Mar/2012	Penalty of late submission apply
Part4: Discussion completed	24/ Mar /2012	Penalty of late submission apply

Marking Criteria/Assessment Rubrics

This assessment will be marked based on the following criteria.

Digital Narrative: 10%
Requirements	Max	Actual
Product overview: description of the selected product and the enterprise application category it belongs to. This description should include but not limited to the general purpose and capabilities of the selected enterprise application category. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Organization overview: general information about the organization selected, like but not limited to: product/service, competitors, market segment and size … etc [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Business challenges: description of the problems and/or opportunities encountered by the organization for which IS investment was considered. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Management role: description of changes/investments made on the managerial level for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Organizational role: description of changes/investments made on the organizational level for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Technology role: description of the IT infrastructure and additional technology investments made for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Information System capabilities: description of the new IS features. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Business Solutions: description of the organization’s strategic objectives achieved as a return of the IS investment. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Total	100
%	10

Discussion: 10% (Individual)
Requirements	Max	Actual
Student demonstrates interest in understanding other groups work by asking good questions or making good comments on various aspects of the Digital Narratives shared by the other groups. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	30
Student demonstrates excellent understanding of various aspects presented in his own group’s Digital Narrative by providing good answers/feedback to other groups’ questions/comments. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	40
It is compulsory that each member of any group respond to all questions/comments posted against their own Digital Narrative.	10
Quality of used vocabulary (i.e. course and business related) [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	20
Total	100
%	10

Project Course and Technology Concept

Module 1 activities triggered a lot of reflections and as a result I made several changes in my practices this semester. One of the things I'm doing this semester is replacing the traditional report + slides assignment deliverables with Digital Narrative + Online Discussion board for my MIS course. I’m now  planning to use this as the topic for my Module 2 project of the PGCTHE program. This will help me to allocate more time for reflection on the outcome of the experience throughout the way and upon the assignment completion.

The idea is very simple, the students are suppose to develop a case study in their MIS course describing the business case behind an Enterprise Application investment. They need to put their findings in a creative Digital Narrative to be shared and discussed online. I’m considering YouTube as a tool for sharing and discussion. The students were excited that they are doing an assignment without writing a report nor preparing slides! I'm keen to find out the details of their experience and will be glad to share the outcomes with PGCTHE participants.

The course that I'll be trying this technology concept with is BMGN N340 Management Information Systems.

Hybrid Learning Pilot Reflection

I participated in the Hybrid Learning Pilot with two courses: ITEC-N411 and ITEC-N287. The approach I chose is the 50% f2f and 50% online. The attendance was a major concern; therefore I put a weekly task to be submitted online as a proof for utilizing the time allocated for independent learning weekly. The IL weekly activities varied: Case studies blogs, new topics discussions, projects journals, and traditional assignments. Some policies were established after the feedback collected from students during the first three weeks, those are:

1. The weekly IL started Sundays and ended Saturdays midnight
2. An announcement got published every Sunday describing the respective week’s IL task

In addition to the above, the students agreed to provide their personal emails to be used with the college emails as two additional communication methods for the weekly announcements as well as any additional required messages. The experience had an overall positive impact on the outcome of the semester, however, few areas for improvements were highlighted for similar experiences in the future.

It’s well known that the flexibility of the Hybrid learning approach is probably the most obvious advantage, which was the case for our BAS students that are mostly working students with serious family commitments. On top of that, the students benefited from the opportunity to dig deeper in the delivered topics and learn deeper on their own and using their own learning style. Such opportunity is much slimmer with pure f2f approach due to the limitation of time that forces the student to remain passive to a large degree in his learning process, given the previously highlighted commitments. On the other hand, students learning on their own pace while exercising a lot of time management techniques to meet the weekly deadlines. In brief, this experience allowed the students to further develop their independence, time management, research skills, and the sense of responsibility for their own learning.

The weekly deadlines however increased the stress for the students no matter how small the required task. This was one of the major changes in the style our students are used to, which left them uncomfortable. In a semester the students usually have three to four deadlines and a lot of them do the most in the last one week before any deadline. To have two weekly deadlines for two courses and sometimes more when other courses assessments are due certainly was an annoying element. One more challenge the pilot implied is slowing down the pace of the topics delivery in general compared to my previous experience running the same course fully f2f in spite of the deeper understanding benefit described above.

In my opinion the advantages are overweighing the encountered issues, which can be addressed and improved with better alternate strategies. Many ideas are there among which replacing the weekly deadlines with weekly reading and an optional discussion board with a weekly deadline for the teacher to address all the raised concerns by the students. The evaluation can be then on the students pattern analysis regarding the overall activity level in the optional discussion. We would love to brainstorm such alternate strategies to support this worldwide trend of online learning. After all, I believe we’ll be in a better position if we try to adapt to it rather than resist it.

Module 2 ... It's still me!

I'm excited to resume PGCTHE program and looking forward for all the learning opportunities it'll bring ... it's really fun to officially be a student again ... I'm also glad for the opportunity to get to know more fellow participants through the new group. I have introduced myself in the very first post of this blog and won't repeat myself in this one ... I would like to focus on my experience in using education technology.

Throughout my 7 years of teaching at the HCT and my prior training profession, I had the chance to employ technology in various aspects of teaching and learning ... Some of the tools I worked with: Smarboards, Camtasia, WEB 2.0 tools, Sharepoint, and our Queen ... BbVista.

Most of my courses are linked to weekly online discussion boards for reinforcement activities and reflections. Two distinguished learning experiences I conducted through education technology are: peer tutoring using Camtasia, and Hybrid Learning Pilot using BbVista.

In the Peer Tutoring with Camtasia, administered back in 2008, the students selected one of Microsoft .net technologies to learn on their own as an extension to what was covered in class. They then prepared a Camtasia recording of themselves explaining what they learning in a video. They then shared their videos using the class Sharepoint site and were responsible for responding to their peers questions on the topic. It was a very successful experience based on the students feedback. I will share my experience with BbVista Hybrid Learning Pilot, administered back in 2009, in my following post.

I fully agree with the "Ten reasons for using education technology" article and constantly try to innovate new learning opportunities with the help for the latest and greatest tools.