Implementation Plan ... A Series of Fortunate Events!

It was very nice coincident to find out that the requirement for this week is to come up with “Implementation Plan” for our projects. This is due to the fact that I have already developed, shared with the students three weeks ago, and posted in my first week blog one J

Reading Jonassen et al. text on “How Does Technology Facilitate Learning?”, was another fortunate event today. This is due to the fact that I found at least a dozen of reasons supporting the use of Digital Narratives to foster students learning J

I thought it’ll be a good exercise to do this week’s assignment in a reverse manner, by evaluating the design of my implementation plan using the concepts in Jonassen’s text.

Assignment Learning Objectives

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, the learning objectives of this MIS assignment can be defined as follows:

•        Evaluate how enterprise systems help businesses achieve operational excellence.

•        Describe how supply chain management systems coordinate planning, production, and logistics with suppliers.

•        Explain how customers’ relationship management systems help firms achieve customer intimacy.

•        Identify the challenges posed by enterprise applications.

•        Describe how enterprise applications are used in platforms for new cross-functional services.

The Concept

The idea is very simple; the students are supposed 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.

Proposed Pedagogical Approach

This is a very learner-centered pedagogy strategy for the many active learning opportunities that it involves the students in:

• Starting from the Independent Learning approach to better understand the nature of the three categories of Enterprise Applications as described in Chapter 9 of the course textbook.

• The full involvement of students in designing the research to understand the circumstances surrounded a real-world scenario of a real organization while investing in such system.

• Another learner-centered opportunity is the involvement of students in designing a Digital Narrative to present their findings as a creative digital story.

• And finally, students will be involved in rating other groups Digital Narratives and discussing them in a semi-controlled online discussion, following the rules outlined in the “Discussion” component of this assessed task.

How Discussed Digital Narratives Foster Learning

The proposed pedagogical approach to use Discussed Digital Narrative fosters meaningful learning because the whole assignment concept, development approach, as well as the end results requires the students to think and reason:

• Casual Thinking is required for the students to explain the connections among the: selected product capabilities, business challenges faced by the selected organization, the various changes that the organization had to administer to realize a return of their investment, the development of a sensible sequence of thoughts to produce a Digital Narrative, and finally to provide meaningful answer to various questions posted against their Digital Narratives by other groups.

• Analogical Thinking is required for the students to compare and contrast the self studied theoretical concepts from Chapter 9 with facts collected from the real organization to develop the case study of their Digital Narrative. By relating to the business case of the real organization they’ll be able to better understand the concepts delivered in the assigned reading.

• Expressive Thinking is required for the students to represent what they know about selected Enterprise Application in the context of the real-world case study. They’re also required to express their understanding in various formats, using: Digital Storytelling tools, and online discussion tools. They will also need to express their understanding of the theories self-studied from Chapter 9 while designing their research by deciding on the type of questions to ask and approaching the right people with those questions.

•  Experiential Thinking is described by Jonassen in his text to result in the most meaningful and resistant memories, which is certainly in line with the Digital Narrative component of this assessment. The students will develop a digital story of their learning experience that will deepen their understanding and help them effectively achieve the learning objectives of this experience.

• Problem Solving skills of the students are going to be exhausted throughout this exciting learning opportunity all the way till the end. According to Jonassen’s text, deciding what information to include, how to structure it, and what form it should take are all complex decision-making processes that are required to meet the requirements of this assignment.

My Expectations

Jonassen’s very convincing argument for learning to happen as a result of productive thinking and meaning making by students as they learn with technology, rather than from technology is guiding my expectations in this project. I have limited the role of technology in this assignment to set of tools that students will use to learn with not from, while representing what they know in various formats. I expect the resultant learning to be deeper and more meaningful; however, experience is the best proof!