Transcript Project-Based Learning - University of Houston

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:
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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.
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http://www.aacsb.edu/resource_centers/assessment/overviewexpectations.asp
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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
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Learning goals must be defined for each degree program
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Four to ten goals should be developed for each degree
program
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Student performance on learning goals must be
assessed systematically and routinely
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However, no particular approach to assurance of learning
is prescribed by AACSB
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Assessment of programs should include direct measures
of learning
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Course grades cannot be considered as program
assessment measures
THE AACSB EXPECTATIONS ON ASSURANCE OF LEARNING
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Assessment results must be analyzed, disseminated, and
utilized by the faculty toward curriculum planning
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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
 Key ingredients of the group project
Tools &
Technologies
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)
1. The group project significantly helped me to improve my
understanding of the course materials
2. The group project helped me to improve my oral communication
3. The group project helped me to improve my written communication
4. The group project helped me to understand teamwork
5. I had fair participation in forming my team at the beginning of the
semester
6. In general, members in my team participated fairly equally in all group
activities
7. My team members took responsibilities of their task or work
8. My team members showed interest in initiating a task or work
9. My team members completed their portion of the task/work on time
10. My team members responded to my e-mail or telephone call on time
11. 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
Question/Course
MIS
SAD
WEB
ADWEB
ALL
Helped to understand
course materials
2.64
1.87
1.7
1.57
2.01
Helped to improve
oral communication
2.56
2.39
1.7
1.71
2.25
Helped to improve
written communication
2.60
2.43
2.6
2.29
2.49
2.16
2.26
1.5
1.57
2.06
I had fair participation in forming team
2.04
1.96
1.6
1.57
1.86
Group members participated fairly in
teamwork
1.68
2.05
1.3
2.29
1.86
Team members took responsibilities in
their work
1.64
2.17
1.4
1.71
1.79
Team members showed interest in
initiating work
1.68
2.24
1.1
2.29
1.90
Team members completed their portion
of tasks
1.56
1.89
1.3
1.71
1.74
Team members responded to
e-mails/phone calls
1.76
1.81
1.2
1.86
1.69
Team members were helpful in resolving
conflicts
1.56
2.04
1.5
1.86
1.75
Helped to understand teamwork
* Scale: 1 - 5, and a smaller number means a greater degree of agreement
THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS: MEAN RESPONSE
Question/Course
UG
GRAD
ALL
Helped to understand course materials
2.21
1.79
2.01
Helped to improve oral communication
2.50
1.98
2.25
Helped to improve written communication
2.52
2.46
2.49
Helped to understand teamwork
2.17
1.94
2.06
I had fair participation in forming team
1.92
1.79
1.86
Group members participated fairly in teamwork
1.64
2.10
1.86
Team members took responsibilities in their work
1.67
1.92
1.79
Team members showed interest in initiating work
1.81
2.00
1.90
Team members completed their portion of tasks
1.58
1.92
1.74
Team members responded to e-mails/phone calls
1.65
1.73
1.69
Team members were helpful in resolving conflicts
1.69
1.81
1.75
1.93
1.95
1.94
Overall
* 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?