AGRO 153 - Soil Resources Online - A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

Soil Resources (AGRO 153) is a high enrollment, introductory-level course taken by a diverse range of student majors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), predominantly from the College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources (CASNR). Students that enroll in this course typically span all undergraduate class levels, and a small number of graduate students fulfilling degree requirements or prerequisites. AGRO 153 online is a smaller enrollment section of the course that is often taken by students when (a) the resident sections have closed due meeting maximum capacity, (b) there is a timing conflict within their course schedule, or (c) the student is enrolled in an online program or completing courses remotely. This course portfolio focuses on efforts to improve students’ ability to identify, relate, and describe soil profile characteristics to soil forming factors and processes. It includes a discussion on the development of an interactive lecture video with embedded concept questions, the implementation of pre- and post-surveys to evaluating student learning in association with the video, and comparison of assessments to previous semesters. The results show there was no overall impact on student learning or performance with this new activity, compared to three previous semesters

Success Canvas® in practice

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engineering and Management of Information SystemsIn the past few years, canvas has been proved to be a valuable tool. Canvas are management tools characterized by presenting a visual template, that can be customized and applied according to a specific target, creating, or documenting theoretical structures to serve as support for addressing design problems or identifying relevant aspects in the context of an area. These frameworks are often systematized into conceptual boxes with the intent of guiding the user to gather and analyze critical information to achieve their objective and improve performance with transparency. In the Information Systems project management field, there are scarce studies that focus on practical cases using canvas as management tools, specifically examining project success. The Success Canvas® or Project Management Success Map®, is an exception since it captures the definition of success in a project and what is meaningful to accomplish it, considering, for example, the criteria for evaluating success, expected benefits, and success factors. Due to the lack of literature surrounding canvas and the ambiguous concept of success, especially when followed by project management, there is an opportunity to explore this topic by studying on the current state of the art regarding existing canvas in the information systems field, as well as the results that they have been showing in practice, to characterize the contribution of the Success Canvas® to improve project management. To conduct this study, it was adopted a Multiple Case Study methodology. This study contributes with new insights on the benefits of the practical usage of the Success Canvas®, as well as expanding the current literature.Os canvas têm sido reconhecidos como instrumentos de grande utilidade no contexto da gestão. Sendo caracterizados como ferramentas de gestão visuais, permitem identificar aspetos relevantes numa determinada área de aplicação. Estes instrumentos são frequentemente estruturados em caixas temáticas, com a intenção de orientar o utilizador na recolha e análise de informações cruciais a fim de atingir um objetivo, assim como melhorar o desempenho com transparência. No âmbito da gestão de projetos de Sistemas de Informação, são escassos os estudos focados no uso de canvas como instrumentos de gestão, especificamente quando nos referimos ao sucesso de projetos. O Success Canvas® ou Project Management Success Map®, trata-se de uma exceção, dado que visa capturar a definição de sucesso dentro de um projeto, enfatizando os diversos aspetos relevantes como, por exemplo, os critérios de avaliação do sucesso, os benefícios esperados e os fatores de sucesso. Devido à falta de literatura e à ambiguidade envolvente no conceito de sucesso, especialmente referente à gestão de projetos, existe assim uma oportunidade para explorar este tópico, refletindo sobre o estado de arte atual em relação aos canvas existentes na área de Sistemas de Informação, e os resultados que estes têm apresentado na prática, de modo a caracterizar o contributo que o Success Canvas® pode representar no exercício de gestão de projetos. Para a realização do estudo, foi adotada a metodologia multiple case study. Este estudo contribuiu para a avaliação benefícios da utilização prática do Success Canvas®, expandindo a literatura e o corpo de conhecimento da área