Online IS Education for the 21st Century

Online teaching and learning have become increasingly common in higher educational institutions. These higher educational institutions realize the growing importance of online learning in information systems/information technology (IS/IT) education and are now offering online IS/IT courses and programs to students. However, designing, developing, teaching, and assessing an online IS/IT course effectively is often a challenge. Many IS/IT instructors are new to online teaching and need orientation and training for their own readiness in designing, developing, teaching, and assessing IS/IT courses in the online environment. It is recognized that effective faculty are key to student success in online courses and to the success of online programs (Meyer and Jones, 2012). Therefore, it is imperative that administrators and instructors of IS/IT courses and programs learn more of the best practices of online teaching for high student success. This support to instructors and administrators is the purpose of the Special Issue of the Journal of Information Systems Education

Integrating Learning Analytics to Measure Message Quality in Large Online Conversations

Research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) often employs content analysis as an approach to investigate message quality in asynchronous online discussions using systematic message-coding schemas. Although this approach helps researchers count the frequencies by which students engage in different socio-cognitive actions, it does not explain how students articulate their ideas in categorized messages. This study investigates the effects of a recommender system on the quality of students’ messages from voluminous discussions. We employ learning analytics to produce a quasi-quality index score for each message. Moreover, we examine the relationship between this score and the phases of a popular message-coding schema. Empirical findings show that a custom CSCL environment extended by a recommender system supports students to explore different viewpoints and modify interpretations with higher quasi-quality index scores than students assigned to the control software. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed

Teaching Tip: A Scalable Hybrid Introductory Analytics Course

We report on the design and development of an introductory analytics course delivered to almost 10,000 undergraduate business students to date. One novel aspect of the course is its orientation to add analytics capabilities to a business student’s toolbox, resulting in significant design and implementation implications. We anchored the course on three fundamental principles: maximizing learning, operating at scale, and a consistent experience for all learners. To enable a rigorous and valuable learning experience, the underlying course curriculum is based on the modified CRISP-DM (CRoss Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) framework. Bloom’s taxonomy is applied to the course assessments to evaluate the depth of learning. The course is delivered in a hybrid mode, arguably the best combination of online and face-to-face delivery modes. In a naturally occurring experimental setting, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the evolution of the course and generated additional reinforcing lessons. We explore those lessons and suggest directions for further research

Towards a Scalable Digital Skills Training Architecture for Resource-Constrained Environments: The Case of Ayitic Goes Global in Haiti

In developing countries such as Haiti, which are marked by high unemployment and gender inequality, online education has the potential to change lives. Returns on education are particularly high in Information Communications Technology (ICT)-intensive jobs and IT outsourcing offers opportunities for remote employment, providing alternatives for economic diversification and job creation that are particularly relevant for youth and women. However, the problem faced by many developing countries, is that traditional models, frameworks, architectures and platforms for online learning do not lend themselves well to their context and, therefore, it is important to develop context specific platforms. This need for suitable platforms has motivated the research question that this paper seeks to address, that is, “What is the appropriate architecture that supports learning strategies for delivering scalable digital skills training in a resource-constrained environment?” We propose an architecture that was developed specifically for blended learning in resource-constrained environments and describe how a prototype for this was designed, built, and deployed in Haiti. The initial findings from the application of the architecture have been extremely positive and are reflected not only in the testimonials of the participants but also by the interest of other countries of the region to adopting the proposed architecture

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Engagement in socio constructivist online learning to support personalisation and borderless education

Increasingly, higher education is tasked with designing online courses that fulfil the twin purposes of scalability and personalisation. In response to market pressures, a traditionally taught masters at a UK university undertook its first online module. Influenced by existing evidence around creating a positive online learning environment through pertinent course structure and pedagogy, the new online module followed socio-constructivist principles and was then evaluated through a mixed method research study. By dividing the teaching team between ‘academic experts’ and ‘pedagogic coordinators’ students drew on the expertise of active researchers through their published work, a podcast and an asynchronous discussion forum. Students’ reflections on iterative fortnightly research themes were moderated in a second discussion forum by the pedagogic coordinators but was highly influenced by the strength of the peer support and review that was designed into the course. Recommendations are offered on how the personalisation and borderless provision of a socio constructivist design can be implemented in an online format

Critical Success Factors for Online Education: Longitudinal Results on Program Satisfaction

For the past 15-20 years, many researchers have investigated the differences (or lack thereof) between online and face-to-face (F2F) course delivery and student learning. Most of this body of research concerns an individual course, an individual faculty, or a particular technology or tool. However, we do not yet know much about the factors that an online degree program requires to succeed. Which factors have the greatest impact on student satisfaction with an online degree program? We collected data on seven potential critical success factors from 2009 to 2014 to measure their impact on student satisfaction. The final model shows course conduct, admissions, curriculum, and prior experience with online courses at that same location to be significant predictors of program satisfaction

Crowdsourcing Cognitive Presence: A Quantitative Content Analysis of a K12 Educator MOOC Discussion Forum

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer participants opportunities to engage with content and discussion forums similar to other online courses. Pedagogical components of MOOCs and the nature of learning are worth of examining due to issues involving scale, interaction and the role of the instructor (Ross, Sinclair, Know, Bayne & McLeod, 2014). The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework provides a basis for measuring cognitive presence in online discussion forums. As voluntary point of entry to a community of learners, it is important to consider the nature of participant contributions in terms of cognitive presence. This study focused on an educator MOOC because MOOCs have been proposed as an efficient vehicle for providing professional development due to the significant self-identification of participants as educators (Ho et al. 2014). Participant attributes have been categorized, however the discussion forum is difficult to study on a massive scale (Kizilcec, Piech, & Schulz, 2013). Automated measures of cognitive presence may not provide the full view of learning behaviors implicit in messages posted to the forums (Wong, Pursel, Divinsky & Jansen, 2015). To address this gap, the forum messages were hand-coded and analyzed using quantitative content analysis (Neuendorf, 2002). The study found that the measure of exploration increased over the duration of the course. Viewing cognitive presence over time provided a new metaphor for explaining the proportions of cognitive presence in the discussion forum of an educator MOOC. This finding suggests that increased instructor presence during the later stages of the course may increase cognitive presence over time (Akyol & Garrison, 2007; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005)

Sustainability Teaching and Learning in Information Systems: Reflections on Over a Decade of Experience

Despite calls to integrate sustainability topics into information systems (IS) curricula, there is little concrete direction on how to do it. The purpose of this paper is to share the author’s experience in developing and delivering a master’s level course on information systems and sustainable development. The paper highlights key considerations related to designing such a course, discusses the advantages and limitations of different approaches, and offers practical suggestions for IS faculty who seek to develop similar courses for their own programs