PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ACROSS THE MIS CURRICULUM: AN ASSESSMENT ON TEAM BUILDING

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ACROSS THE MIS CURRICULUM: AN ASSESSMENT ON TEAM BUILDING MOHAMMAD A. ROB & VANCE ETNYRE School of Business University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) Houston, Texas 77058

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING Project or Inquiry-Based Learning is an instructional method that typically - uses complex, real-world projects have duration & deadlines like real-life projects provides communication between team members provides planning and team work provides opportunity to take responsibility adheres to curricular framework most importantly, it provides opportunity for learning the subject matter through actions

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ACROSS THE MIS CURRICULUM Teaching Systems Analysis & Design through Group Projects is a common practice One of the authors (MAR) use it in all his courses: Management Information Systems Systems Analysis and Design IT Project Management Data Warehouse & Data Mining Web Development Advanced Web Development (e-commerce) Group projects also provide an opportunity for assessment of Teamwork Skills – one of the learning goals defined for our MIS Program as required by AACSB

THE AACSB REQUIREMENT ON ASSURANCE OF LEARNING The new AACSB accreditation requires assessment of student learning as part of the curriculum management process in the school of business. http://www.aacsb.edu/resource_centers/assessment/overview-expectations.asp The Assurance of Learning standards call for each degree program to: define learning goals, assess student achievement for these goals, and utilize what is learned through assessment to continually improve their curricular programs.

THE AACSB EXPECTATIONS REGARDING ASSURANCE OF LEARNING Learning goals must be defined for each degree program Four to ten goals should be developed for each degree program Student performance on learning goals must be assessed systematically and routinely However, no particular approach to assurance of learning is prescribed by AACSB Assessment of programs should include direct measures of learning Course grades cannot be considered as program assessment measures

THE AACSB EXPECTATIONS ON ASSURANCE OF LEARNING Assessment results must be analyzed, disseminated, and utilized by the faculty toward curriculum planning Faculty are expected to be actively involved in all stages of the assessment process including defining goals, curriculum alignment, developing appropriate measures, implementing course-embedded measures, and improving the school’s curriculum Schools also will be expected to show how assessment results subsequently impacted their curriculum planning

THE UHCL MIS PROGRAM LEARNING GOALS To adequately prepare our MIS students for various IT-related careers, we expect them to develop skills in the following five areas, or our learning goals are: IT Competence in Business Applications Programming IT Competence in Networking IT competence in Database Critical Thinking, and Teamwork We will focus on Teamwork skills here

TEAMWORK SKILLS THROUGH GROUP PEOJECTS Teamwork skills are addressed in a number of MIS courses through group projects It is expected that the participation in group projects will sharpen a student’s teamwork skills The specific teamwork skills emphasized in the group projects include the following: Communication Participation Leadership Initiative Contribution Collaboration Conflict resolution Group-decision making

ASSESSMENT OF TEAMWORK SKILLS A questionnaire will be developed for the students to measure teamwork skills in each course A scale of 1 – 5 (signifying respectively strongly agree, agree, fairly, disagree, strongly disagree) will be employed to measure teamwork skills An average score of 3 or less will be considered a satisfactory skill level and that of 2 or less will be considered a mastery of the skills

IMPLEMENTING GROUP PROJECTS IN VARIOUS COURSES Except for the basic MIS course, a group project has typically 3 group members is semester long has at least three presentations focusing on the main learning objectives or models used in the subject matter. They are typically aligned with the planning, analysis/design, and implementation phases of the project requires development of documentations prescribed by the subject matter typically requires development of a prototype requires use of specific software tools requires development of a project binder requires development of a web site for documentation, and typically weighs 20%-40% of overall course grade The MIS course had two small projects focusing mainly on e-business or emerging technology

THE GROUP PROJECT FRAMEWORK Tools & Technologies Key ingredients of the group project Project Models & Techniques Communication

THE GROUP PROJECT FRAMEWORK Key Models & Techniques: Presentations are focused on models and techniques on a subject Depending on the course they include: feasibility study, data-flow diagrams, program design, project plan, dimensional modeling, snow-flake schema, star schema, cube etc. Tools and Technologies: Be familiar with the tools and technologies used in industry Mainly the software tools such as Visio, Visible Analyst, Microsoft Project, Visual WebMatrix, etc. required for a course Communication: Communication is very important for an IT person Presentations on key concepts and models, written documentations, and web site development are parts of communication

THE ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE The following survey questionnaire was used to assess team building; scale: 1 – 5 (strongly agree – strongly disagree) The group project significantly helped me to improve my understanding of the course materials The group project helped me to improve my oral communication The group project helped me to improve my written communication The group project helped me to understand teamwork I had fair participation in forming my team at the beginning of the semester In general, members in my team participated fairly equally in all group activities My team members took responsibilities of their task or work My team members showed interest in initiating a task or work My team members completed their portion of the task/work on time My team members responded to my e-mail or telephone call on time My team members were helpful in resolving differences/conflicts between us Note, the first three questions have no direct relationship to team building

THE ASSESSMENT DATA The survey was conducted for two semesters on four courses There were 100 respondents in the survey There were 52 undergraduate and 48 graduate students The MIS course is purely undergraduate for all majors Systems Analysis & Design is mixed undergrad and grad The authors believed that response from grads would be significantly different from undergrads; as majority of the grad students typically work in an IT area (Hypothesis 1) The authors also believed that there would be significant differences in the response to 11 questions (Hypothesis 2)

THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS: MEAN RESPONSE * Scale: 1 - 5, and a smaller number means a greater degree of agreement

THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS: GENERAL OBSERVATION Questions 4-11: Team Building (<2.0) The average responses on team building show that students had a positive experience towards team building - less than 2.0 signify mastery of the skills Question 1: Improved understanding of Subject Matter (<2.0) Results shows that group project helped students to learn course materials Exception is the MIS course ( >2.0); which is expected as the group project is not based on the overall subject matter Questions 2 & 3: Improved Oral & Written Communication (>2.0) In general there is no effect of group project on oral and written communication. This is expected, as there were no special emphasis on communication in Team Building other than e-mails or telephone calls

THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS: FURTHER ANALYSIS The result of a two-tailed t-test did NOT show a significant difference between the overall response level of undergraduates (1.924) and graduates (1.949) – opposing hypothesis one The t-statistic for the difference was 0.466 - much smaller than the 1.962 critical value required for a significant difference at the 0.05 level of significance. The authors also believed that there would be significant differences in the responses to the eleven different questions This was affirmed by a one-way analysis of variance test which had a measured value of 8.181 for Fisher’s F-Test significantly higher than the critical value of 1.839 – supporting hypothesis two

THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS: FURTHER ANALYSIS The authors found that there were three statements which received responses significantly lower than the overall average response of 1.936: 9. My team members completed their portion of the task/work on time ( mean response = 1.740, t-value = -2.137, critical value = 1.962 ) 10. My team members responded to my e-mail or telephone call on time (mean response = 1.690, t-value = -2.703, critical value = 1.962 ) 11. My team members were helpful in resolving differences/conflicts (mean response = 1.750, t-value = -2.047, critical value = 1.962 ) The statements which received significantly less agreement than the overall response were: 2. The group project helped me to improve my oral communication (mean response = 2.250, t-value = 3.433, critical value = 1.962 ) 3. The group project helped me to improve my written communication (mean response = 2.490, t-value = 6.064, critical value = 1.962 )

CONCLUSION All students in a semester-long project closely-related to subject matter had a positive experience on team building In general, there is no significant difference on team building between the undergraduate and graduate students Students of the general Management Information Systems course, taken by all undergraduate business majors, have an overall positive experience on team building, than the MIS majors who may have had several group projects during their course of study Analysis of data for a cross-listed SAD course show that undergraduate students have a more positive attitude towards team building than graduate students - may be for the same reason as mentioned above

Thank You & Questions?

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ACROSS THE MIS CURRICULUM: AN ASSESSMENT ON TEAM BUILDING