Strengthening Learning Habits Through Individual Unique Assignments

This paper describes a method for reinforcing learning habits among students in the Computer Science and Information Systems department. On top of the sharp reduction in the number of enrolled students, there is an increase in the dropout rate that stems from poor learning habits. Strengthening learning habits can play a significant role in increasing students’ overall motivation and self-accountability, and it can reduce the relatively high failure rate. These learning characteristics are necessary as well for future collaborative activities, which are a cornerstone of the computer science profession. The individual unique assignments method described in this paper was employed on two courses and helped reduce the failing rate. This paper relates to some quantitative results combined with a qualitative analysis obtained through the students\u27 own reflections on the method, and concludes with a discussion on the results and future follow-up directions

IS education – An Empirical Study Of Individually Assigned Homework

There is a general agreement that homework plays an important role in students\u27 learning. We argue that without examining and re-examining the potential benefits of homework assignments and whether they are achieved, we miss the opportunity to support students\u27 learning. In this paper we describe an instructional tactic of individually assigned homework that promotes and strengthens individual learning processes. The method was originally developed to cope with the relatively high IS students\u27 failing rate. We describe the study that accompanied the employment of this tactic in a Computer Architecture course and describe respective quantitative and qualitative results. For the first time ever no student failed the course and an increase in students\u27 motivation and learning accountability was observed. We compare the results to a previous study we conducted using the same tactic and discuss the implication of our results for IS education

The Importance of Emphasizing Individual Learning in the “Collaborative Learning Era”

In this paper we describe an instructional tactic of individually assigned homework that promotes and strengthens individual learning processes. We claim that current emphasis on the benefits of collaborative learning belittles the importance of individual learning processes and reduces the opportunities to require and assess individual learning within IS education. In our study, which used specially designed individual assignments, we succeeded in dramatically reducing the failure rate in two courses in two consecutive semesters. We present findings from additional research tools that support and explain the change we found in the failure rate when the tactic of the individually assigned homework was used. We conclude with some implications of the suggested tactic including dealing with academic dishonesty and lowering the dropout rate in IS education

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse