Secondary Biology Instruction in The General Senior Secondary Schools of Aceh Province Indonesia: An analysis of Teachers’ Opinions and Teaching Practices Related to The Indonesia Biology Curriculum 2013

My study was to discover the perceptions of general secondary senior high school biology teachers about the application of curriculum 2013. Their further opinions of biology topics and the instructional practices in the class have supported the findings of this study. In addressing this study, general senior secondary school (GSSS) biology teachers (n=286) from 22 districts in Aceh province randomly participated in my study. Thus, six (n=6) teachers were selected as convenience sampling to have a one-on-one phone interview. The data collected were analyzed descriptively (frequency and percentage) and thematically to answer the research questions. The documents comparison between the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards Life Science (NGSS-LS) and 2013 Indonesian biology curriculum (IBC 2013) for senior secondary school showed similarity in the elements of comparison. Yet, the performance expectation in NGSS-LS is connected to three dimensions of framework and other ideas within disciplines. Most GSSS biology teachers in Aceh province believed that the 2013 curriculum had offered the better system to improve the teaching and learning quality. The GSSS biology teachers agreed that almost all biology topics listed were significant and should be taught to senior high school students. However, some of them possessed ideas about an ideal curriculum that would include local contents, be designed by the biology experts whom fully understand of the biology contents and must be supported with adequate learning facilities or infrastructure. Teachers had taught those biology topics listed in the 2013 curriculum, with some challenges they faced. They had also used some teaching models and prefer to use various teaching models that focus on student-centered. Although the new required assessment system is complex and detailed, most teachers had tried to apply various techniques of the evaluation in the classroom such as assigning paper tests and homework (to measure students’ knowledge), observation and self-assessment (to measure students’ attitude) and performance assessment (to measure students’ skill). In terms of characters education assimilation, several characters such as religious, honest, tolerance, discipline, hard-working, creative, curiosity, communicative/being friendly, social and environmental awareness, and responsible have been applied at a different stage of instructional and in school’s co-curricular activities

Team Collaboration in Virtual Worlds: Editorial to the Special Issue

Virtual worlds are Internet-based three-dimensional (3D) computer-generated environments where users interact through “avatars” – a computer-generated representation of themselves that they control in terms of appearance and behavior. In recent years, virtual worlds have evolved into sophisticated social systems where millions of people regularly collaborate. For dispersed organizational teams, they represent a viable collaboration environment in which users can integrate different communication channels and manipulate digital artifacts that represent actual team deliverables. In this editorial to the Special Issue on Team Collaboration in Virtual Worlds, we discuss past research and highlight key findings with respect to five dimensions of collaborative work: technology, people, information, process, and leadership. We conclude with a discussion of the key research challenges that lie ahead to shape the research agenda for team collaboration in virtual worlds and metaverses

Creativity and Information Systems in a Hypercompetitive Environment: A Literature Review

In today’s hypercompetitive environment in which markets change rapidly and competitive advantages are difficult to sustain, companies are forced to innovate and identify new business opportunities. However, innovation requires ingenuity and creativity. Product and service development depends on the creativity of employees, but harvesting and bringing novel ideas to fruition is often a chaotic process, which underscores the importance of creativity management within organizations. In this article, we review the literature on creativity in an effort to summarize state-of-the-art knowledge on how to stimulate creativity and spur innovation in modern organizations. For that purpose, we use Rhodes’ 4-Ps model (1961) distinguishing between creative environments (called press), people, products, and processes. Through a review of 110 journals on the AIS journal list, this article offers insights―based on eighty-eight articles―into how creativity can be stimulated and supported by attending to each of these components. The literature teaches us how to utilize, evaluate, and strategize about creativity in organizational settings. Managers are advised to advance creativity and ideation processes, for example by building virtual environments that strengthen collaboration and creativity across organizational boundaries. Researchers are encouraged to investigate the relationship between strategy and information systems (IS) usage in fostering creativity

A Qualitative Study Toward Understanding Educators’ Perceptions of a Talent Development Program Designed to Address the Underrepresentation of Historically Marginalized Students in Advanced Programming in a Large Virginia School Division

This study extends the limited, existing research on Sunnydale Public School’s (SPS’s) SOAR program. For clarity, SOAR is a talent development (TD) program that aims to not only enhance students’ reasoning and problem-solving abilities but also to remedy the racial/ethnic disproportionality of SPS\u27s gifted and talented program. More specifically, I used interpretive, qualitative methods for this investigation to understand participants’ perceptions of SOAR, in hopes of adding to the talent development knowledge base and informing SOAR policy and practice. Ultimately, participant views converged on several topics (i.e. racial and ethnic disproportionality, brain malleability, multiple intelligences, etc.) and diverged on others (i.e. SOAR’s value). Taking interview and focus group data, SPS documents, past researchers’ findings, my own experiences, and existing literature into account, I arrived at and offer several commendations and recommendations that might benefit SPS’s SOAR program and might be considered alongside other research by districts of similar contexts looking to adopt or improve a TD program

The IS Core: An Integration of the Core IS Courses

This paper describes an innovative, integrated implementation of the core Information Systems courses. While the published IS curriculum provides standards on course content, it gives little direction on the implementation of the courses. At Brigham Young University, we have reengineered the traditional topics of analysis, database, design, development, networking, etc. into an integrated, 24-hour course block called the “IS Core”. Instead of students moving from class to class, professors now rotate through integrated subjects in a common classroom environment. The IS Core has allowed the department to increase the rigor and integration between subjects so students see the entire systems process and has provided opportunities for cross-topic assignments and integrated exercises. Finally, it has resulted in unintended, additional benefits like increased student culture and student ownership of the major

Full Issue

Volume 4, Number 1 (2019

Integrating Explanatory/Predictive and Prescriptive Science in Information Systems Research

The scholarly information systems (IS) field has a dual role. As an explanatory and predictive science, the field contributes to explaining the pervasive IS that shape the digital age and sometimes also makes predictions about those phenomena. As a prescriptive science, it participates in creating IS-related innovations by identifying means-ends relationships. The two can beneficially interact, such as when explanatory theory provides the basis for generating prescriptions or when applicable knowledge produces explanatory insights. In this commentary, we contribute to integrating these two roles by proposing a framework to help IS researchers navigate the field’s duality to extend the cumulative scholarly knowledge that it creates in terms of justified explanations and predictions and justified prescriptions. The process we describe builds on ongoing, dynamic, iterative, and interrelated research cycles. We identify a set of integrative research practices that occur at the interface between explanatory and predictive science and prescriptive science—the explanation-prescription nexus. We derive guidelines for IS research