Module 2 Project - Literature Review

Going through the resources found on the University of Houston's Digital Storytelling website turned to be a useful investment of time. The website defines Digital Storytelling as the use of computer-based tools to tell a story. The components suggested, are: images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and music. Bernard R. Robin (“Educational Use of Digital Storytelling”, p. 1), provides a similar definition:

combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital  multimedia, such as images, audio, and video. Just about all digital stories bring together some mixture of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video and music to present information on a specific topic.

The reviewed resources emphasized that Digital Stories are very similar to traditional stories in their focus on specific topic and containment of particular point of view. According to the Center of Digital Storytelling, California, Digital Stories are composed of 7 elements:

1.     Point of View

2.     A Dramatic Question

3.     Emotional Content

4.     The Gift of Your Voice

5.     The Power of the Sountrack

6.     Economy of Content

7.     Pacing.

The Digital Storytelling team at the University of Houston enhances the above list for the purpose of meeting educational needs as follows:

1.     The overall purpose of the story

2.     The narrator’s point of view

3.     A dramatic question or questions

4.     The choice of content

5.     Clarity of voice

6.     Pacing of the narrative

7.     Use of a meaningful audio soundtrack

8.     Quality of the images, video and other multimedia elements

9.     Economy of the story details

10.  Good grammar and language use

I found the latter list a very good instrument to devise a Marking Scheme for Assignments of this sort. It will be a very good tool to enhance the marking scheme the next time I setup a similar learning opportunity for the students. It’s too late to incorporate it in the current Assignment that I have already shared it’s outlines including the marking scheme with the students.

Dr. Jonassen et. Al provided in his paper (“How Does Technology Facilitate Learning”) many ways in which students can learn with technology rather than from it. I found that Digital Narrative do meet most of the criteria mentioned by Dr. Jonassen for technology to foster both learning and thinking. Bernard R. Robin’s, (“Educational Use of Digital Storytelling”, p. 5), validated my theory on the suitability of using Digital Narratives to foster students learning. Bernard had successfully identified the various literacy skills that the students would develop by working on Digital Narratives, to be:

1.     Research Skills: Documenting the story, finding and analyzing pertinent

information; 

2.     Writing Skills: Formulating a point of view and developing a script; 

3.     Organization Skills: Managing the scope of the project, the materials used and the time it takes to complete the task; 

4.     Technology Skills: learning to use a variety of tools, such as digital cameras, scanners, microphones and multimedia authoring software;  

5.     Presentation Skills: Deciding how to best present the story to an audience;

6.     Interview Skills: Finding sources to interview and determining questions to ask; 

7.     Interpersonal Skills: Working within a group and determining individual roles for group members; 

8.     Problem-Solving Skills: Learning to make decisions and overcome obstacles at all stages of the project, from inception to completion; and 

9.     Assessment Skills: Gaining expertise critiquing their own and others’ work.

The Digital Storytelling team at the University of Houston recommends Educational Digital Stories to range in length between 2 – 10 minutes. This is very close to the range I provided my students as a guiding reference, considering the nature of the MIS case study in hand.

A very nice sample Digital Narrative “on Digital Storytelling” was found and shared with the students as a reference too.

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!

PLN ... a network that works for you

PLN is a combination of some connection I have in the industry, family members that keeps providing me with valuable updates, colleagues that I share common interest with and bounce ideas with all the time, all the online tools that I check for updates, and last but not the least King Google! I really wonder how we could live before Google, I run to it with any question I have in mind and it always delivers the best resources that gives me what I need.


Networks are very powerful things and PLN is a more focused form of networking for a specific objective ... that is our own learning and professional development ... I mainly used LinkedIn groups and followed some experts on Twitter to get updated on various areas of interest in life ... surprisingly the only one thing that I haven't included in those streams of updates is pedagogical related ones! what a shame!


Another thank you goes to PGCTHE team for guiding us to the importance of developing a more focused approach towards using web 2.0 apps to develop a PLN that truly adds value to our professional life as educators ... I feel now that what I need is to update my Twitter and linkedIn subscriptions to include educational strategies in general and web 2.0 pedagogical strategies in specific ... I'm also planning to take the advice provided by the "Innovative Educator" blog provided through moodle ... I already started following three of the suggested Twitter expert educators.

It's quite complex to manage all this I'm afraid! I would love to get some suggestions on the best way to build a dashboard like environment mainly focused on my education related subscriptions ... The idea is to link all my information feeds, whither it's Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any other blogs or so to this single environment to have a one stop shop that I can visit once a day for updates! 

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.