Active Learning Activities - Don Gaber, Information Systems

The efficacy of the active learning classroom lies on the principal that students learn while doing. There could not be a more appropriate demonstration of this then Don Gaber’s active learning activity depicted below:

Setting: 20-minute activity implemented in a 300-level course; 5 pods with 6 students per pod

Purpose of the activity: One of the course goals is to "apply procedural code and objects to solve business problems and meet business requirements." This activity has students identify multiple options available for a combo box programming object. Students must compare and contrast the options, and distinguish which option or options could provide a useful solution to a common business application problem, or meet programming project requirements.

Setup for the activity: Students complete a hands-on tutorial that includes a brief introduction to a "combo-box" control object, which you commonly see in software used to click and select various options.

When programming these objects, there are typically 20-30 properties to consider. Examples include color, size, style, autocomplete, sorting, etc.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: One student in each group logs on to the Pod PC, and I assign each group a range of properties that begin with the following letters:

• Pod 1: a-b
• Pod 2: c-d
• Pod 3: e-i
• Pod 4: l-s
• Pod 5: s-v

The students then experiment with the options to see what purpose or effect they have on the combo-box object. After about 15 minutes, each team displays their screen to the class and demonstrates their findings. They must also explain how their findings may relate to building an effective programming application.

After the activity: Students demonstrate their findings to the class, and invariably someone remembers and uses at least one of the findings in a future project!

Additional comments from instructor: Students demonstrate what they have discovered instead of me demonstrating each property one-by-one –much more interesting and effective! This same method can work for nearly any software program that has options that should be explored (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, WinTab, etc.).

Tip provided by: Don Gaber

Active Learning Activities - Jean Pratt, Information Systems

Everyone knows that students learn at different paces. Not everyone knows how to effectively teach to this reality. Dr. Jean Pratt, Department of Information Systems, shares a technique she uses to make her activities relevant and engaging to all of her students, no matter what level of understanding they are currently on:

Setting: Regularly implemented in a 300-level course; 8 or 10 pods (depending on section) with 3-4 students per pod.

Purpose of the activity: Engage every student at whatever level of understanding he or she might be on the given learning objective.

Setup for the activity: Students are provided with "Your Turn" exercises based off instructional materials (usually a combination of PowerPoint slides with audio and supplemental lecture/explanation). The level of understanding in my courses tends to be bell curved, so the "Your Turn" exercises increased in difficulty level. One problem was that students on the upper level of the curve had already completed all the "Your Turn" exercises prior to class while students on the other end of the curve were still struggling with the basic exercises. One solution (from Cindy Albert) I had implemented was to have a repertoire of challenge exercises specific to the semester project so that upper-level students could apply directly to their project the learning from the lesson. That still works great, but students are all over the board with the content on which they're working and I lacked the ability to get a really good feel for students' level of understanding on each knowledge/skill. Don Gaber's suggestion: come to class prepared to tweak the existing "Your Turn" exercises. Provide a twist—something that wasn't covered in the PowerPoint slides or the lecture. For example, introduce a "yes, but what if…" scenario where the student has to think beyond the existing scenario and apply the knowledge/skills to a similar (but slightly different) scenario that extends current understanding.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom:

• Students: Since the whole class is working on some version of the same problem, my informal perception is that students are more open to help—perhaps not as embarrassed at being so far behind in comparison to other students. The same PowerPoint slide is displayed on the big screens, but where students are related to their working with that exercise differs. More "Oh! I get it now!" comments and more demonstrated code/text/diagrams. I really believe that the underperforming students are more at ease now (or perhaps I am!). My perceptions of the upper performing students are that they are strengthening their independent learning skills as they have to search for the answers and they are more engaged, since the tweaked exercise is something they could only get by being in class.
  
• Instructor: The whole class flows better now as students work through regular, tweaked and/or project challenge questions. As I kneel down between 2-3 students to work Socratically through either the regular or tweaked exercises, I am able to meet students where they are better than I was when students were all on different exercises. The upper performing students are challenged with the extensions while the underperforming students are grasping the basics. Once the upper performing students complete the tweaked exercises, they move on to the project-specific challenge questions but then come back and rejoin the class on the next regular/tweaked exercise.

After the activity: Are they [students] demonstrating an increased (relative to previous) understanding of knowledge skills? Demonstrated understanding is either through verbal explanation of what and why or physical illustration of code, text or diagram.

Additional comments from the instructor:

• The activity is actually an "approach" and so was applied to each individual/group activity, where appropriate.
• Credit for this goes to Don Gaber, who shared this approach during one of the Active Learning COP group discussions. I tried it the next day and have been incorporating it into as many activities as possible since then.
• I absolutely love this approach.

Tip Provided by: Jean Pratt
Write-up by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities - Tom Sulzer, Information Systems

Professor Tom Sulzer, Department of Information Systems, shares his active learning activity focused on simulations:

Setting: Simulation activity utilizing pod groups (8-10 pods with 4 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: To prepare the students for this activity I had to help them install an SAP client piece of software. In addition, we talked about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions in business and had a reading assignment associated with ERP to better help them understand what it is that ERP is about.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: Part of the SAP curriculum is a "Distribution Game" which allows students to role play being the managers of a company that distributes water. The simulation typically lasts 3 classes and allows the students to gain experience using a real ERP system.

• The first day, students are allowed to modify their product's price and marketing expenditures to get their products to be purchased by a simulated market. Note the market that the simulation tries to simulate is Retail Stores in Germany which is divided up into 3 regions: North, South and West.
  
• In the second session, students are allowed to replenish their inventory once as well as set their product's price and amount of marketing as they did the first day.
  
• In the third session, students build on what they were able to do in the previous days by having unlimited replenishment capability as well as the ability to forecast and select specific replenishment amounts. Note they still are setting price and marketing expenses as well.

After the activity: After each session, we summarized what occurred and allowed the students to share experiences, good and bad. The intent is to help them appreciate, in a safe setting, some of the real-world types of decisions that managers struggle with. While it is in a contrived scenario, the tools they use and their reactions are very close to reality.

Additional comments from instructor: "I believe that the simulation is able to drive home the use of ERP systems and allows them to get hands on experience with an actual piece of software they will potentially see in a real work environment setting."

Tip provided by: Tom Sulzer

Active Learning Activities - Jean Pratt, Information Systems

Communication in the virtual world is a precarious thing: one constantly runs the risk of mistaking sarcasm for sincerity, assuredness for obliviousness, or smiley faces for extraordinarily poor punctuation practices :). The students of Jean Pratt’s Information System’s course ran into this very problem in her active learning activity centered on communication between collaborative, virtual teams:

Setting: Activity utilizing pod groups (8 pods with 3-4 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: Students were instructed to work through some similar diagramming activities in a PowerPoint slide deck prior to coming to class. We had worked through a similar activity in class in the preceding class period. One purpose of this activity was to give students more practice in applying the concepts and skills. Another purpose of this activity was to expose students to working in virtual teams, which are predominant in the field of information systems.

The activity had three parts:

1. Given a scenario, students would collaboratively define business rules.
2. Given business rules defined by another group, students would collaboratively design a data model.
3. Given business rules from one group and resulting data model from another group, class would discuss both relational database design principles and communication across members in virtual teams

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: We started with two business scenarios requiring data collection and storage. Half the class received one scenario; the other half received the other scenario. Each group developed a set of business rules based on the scenario (business rules are the foundation for designing a relational database model). Groups were then instructed to share their business rules with another group on the other side of the classroom. The recipient group was to then develop a data model based on those business rules.

The first half of the activity went well. Student groups used the screen at their pods to define collaboratively the business rules. The last part of the activity also went well. I was able to bring up on the big screens—in a split-screen display—the business rules defined by one group and the resulting data model developed by another group. The design group didn't always design a model the way the business-rule group anticipated!

After the activity: At the end of the class period, students groups were directed to apply outside class the same concepts and skills to their 15-week client project.

Tip provided by: Jean Pratt
Write up by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities—Tom Hilton, Information Systems

Research is very often a lonely pursuit in the undergraduate world. That could possibly be why the library is so often flooded with students weeping over their laptops, sobbing next to bookshelves, or blowing their noses into textbooks that had not previously been used for anything else. Professor Tom Hilton, Department of Information Systems, provides a support group for lonely scholars in his active learning room by assigning group research projects like the one depicted below:

Setting: Group-based activity (10 pods with 4 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: This activity was associated with a text chapter students were to read before class. Aside from the reading, the only advance preparation required of the students was me teaching them how to manage the pod technology, particularly how to display their own laptop screen on the pod display, how to switch the pod display among pod group members' laptops, and how to send their pod's screen to all pods.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: To start, I displayed from the instructor station on all pod screens a list of discussion questions that were answered or partly answered in the reading. As a class, we briefly reviewed them to establish a baseline of understanding of the questions.

Next, each pod group collaboratively chose one or two questions (depending on the number of questions and the number of pod groups) to answer. I explained that all members were to contribute to the development of a whole-pod-group-approved answer.

For 10-15 minutes (depending on the number of questions and the time available), each pod group developed answers to their chosen question/s. Each member used his/her own laptop to search the Web, text pdf (sometimes available), do calculations when needed, and/or write a summary answer. Members shared what they found by talking and by displaying their own laptops on the pod screen. During this time I circulated among the groups clarifying the question being research, (re)directing the discussion, and occasionally arbitrating disagreements.

After the activity: After the research time, each pod group presented its question and related answer. They displayed on all other pods' screens their pod's written paragraph, web resources, or whatever support they found. Usually one member spoke for the pod group, but sometimes all members contributed to the presentation. I encouraged all the other class members to ask follow-up questions for the presenting pod to answer, but this was sometimes hard because students either didn't know enough to come up with additional questions, or they were worried about embarrassing the presenters. To help with this, I would ask follow-up questions as examples. The whole class could respond to the questions, so the presenters weren't left on the spot.

Additional comments from instructor: "I use this activity in several different classes, and sometimes (as in the senior seminar) it has been appropriate to gather the answers into a text addendum of sorts. This has often become a point of pride for the students: extending the text information right up to the state of the art."

Active Learning Activities - Jean Pratt, Information Systems

Setting: Diagramming activity utilizing pod groups (8 pods with 3-4 students per pod), whiteboards, and reporting out to the whole class

Setup for the activity: Students were instructed to work through some similar diagramming activities in a PowerPoint slide deck prior to coming to class. We had worked through a similar activity in class in the preceding class period. One purpose of this activity was to emphasize the value and efficiency of sketching out ideas on a whiteboard before trying to use a computer-aided design tool to create a diagram. A second purpose of this activity was to give students more practice in applying the concepts and skills.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: Student groups gathered around each whiteboard (located at the pods) and discussed various options for diagramming a relational database. I moved from one pod to another using Socratic questioning and mini-lectures as the student groups worked through the diagramming activity. I used the doc cam to zoom in on students' work at the whiteboards to facilitate class discussion of concepts.

After the activity: At the end of the class period, students groups were directed to apply the same diagramming techniques to their 15-week client project. They were provided about 10 minutes to get started on this activity, which they would continue outside class.

Additional comments from instructor: "Student feedback indicated that students were at first a bit embarrassed about having their group work displayed and discussed but they were becoming more comfortable with it because a) they were learning from the whole-class discussion, b) they prefer to focus on the concepts before trying to implement the concepts using a computer tool, c) they prefer to be corrected in an ungraded venue rather than via graded homework, d) they value the individual group/pod attention before the class discussion, and e) they see other groups erasing and revising white-board content as we discuss errors as a full class (i.e., they realize that other groups are making the same errors)."

Active Learning Activities - Don Gaber, Information Systems

Not being an Information Systems major myself, it is hard to imagine working on a database all by my lonesome: I would most certainly need a group of people by my side in order to work effectively with RAM instead of effectively RAMming my head against a wall.  Professor Don Gaber gives his students a chance to do just this (the group work, that is, not the self-inflicted head-wounding) in our latest installment of the “Active Learning Activities” series:

Setting: Problem-based activities involving students working in pod groups (8 pods with 2-5 students per pod) and Q&A with the whole class

Setup for the activity: Students initially learned various database concepts and techniques through self-learning (flipped course) by reading and completing hands-on exercises out of class.

Next, in class we held a Q&A session to help clarify the concepts or answer any questions.

The Q&A is followed by instructor-led hands-on activities to repeat some of the hands-on exercises to reinforce learning, along with alternative solutions and perspectives (different ways to complete similar processes, such as creating advanced database queries).

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: The active learning "problem-solving" activity is held during the next class session when the instructor has one student from each group logon to the pod PC and download a "startup" database file containing the basic criteria outlining the desired results they should obtain. Students must work together to "solve the problem" by collaborating and selecting and using several of the methods learned over the past week. The instructor circulates to check progress and answer questions. Finally, each group, one at a time, displays their pod PC screen to the all of the screens in the classroom and shares and demonstrates their solution to the class.

After the activity: The various methods, concepts, and techniques are discussed in another brief Q&A session, and then students apply and use them as appropriate on their individual student database development projects. The various concepts are also included on D2L-based unit exams with m/c, t/f, selection, and fill-in-the-blank questions. The majority of assessment comes from individual database development projects.

Additional comments from instructor: "Students have achieved higher scores on exams and their individual database development projects as a result of these hands-on ‘problem-solving’ activities."

Tip provided by Don Gaber
Write-up by Jon Pumper