Creating Significant Learning Experiences in Systems Analysis

1
Creating Significant Learning Experiences in
Systems Analysis Design Towards a Service
Learning Paradigm

• Bruce M Saulnier
• Computer Information Systems
• Quinnipiac University
• Bruce.saulnier_at_quinnipiac.edu
• http//mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/saulnier

2
Educational Reform

• The biggest and most long-lasting reforms of
  undergraduate education will come when individual
  faculty or small groups of instructors adopt the
  view of themselves as reformers within their
  immediate sphere of influence, the classes they
  teach every day
• - K. Patricia Cross

3
Personal View of Education

• I do not teach Computer Information Systems
  rather, I use Computer Information Systems to
  teach Students
• Its not about teaching rather, its about the
  students learning.

4
The Learning Pyramid
5
Blooms Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956)

• Recall
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

6
Finks Taxonomy of Significant Learning (Fink,
2003)

• Foundation Knowledge understanding and
  remembering facts and ideas
• Application acquiring skills, creative and
  critical thinking, managing projects
• Integration connecting ideas, people, and
  realms of life
• Human Dimension learning about oneself and
  others
• Caring developing new feelings, interests, and
  values and
• Learning How to Learn becoming a better
  student, inquiring about a subject, self-directed
  learners

7
Learning in Terms of Change

• For learning to occur, there must be some kind of
  change in the learner no change means no
  learning has occurred
• Significant learning requires that there be some
  kind of lasting change that is important in the
  learners life

8
Service Learning (SL)

• An educational process/paradigm which integrates
  community service with active guided reflection
  in ways that both enhance and enrich student
  learning of course materials while simultaneously
  providing real benefits to the community

9
Elements of a SL Course

• The SL course component is designed jointly by
  the course instructor and the community partner
  both are engaged in ongoing dialogue and
  supervision of the students
• Significant student participation in service
  projects that meet real community needs, as
  identified by the community partner, and which
  provide lasting benefits to the community

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Elements of a SL Course (cont)

• The service project requires a serious and
  ongoing time commitment predominantly spent
  working directly with the community group or
  nonprofit agency achieve some level of
  completion in one semester
• Experiential SL integrated with texts, reading,
  writing, as part of course learning objectives

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Elements of SL Course (cont)

• Student written and/or oral reflection on
  relationship of service experience to both
  academic course material as well as their
  personal growth and
• Grading for the SL component constitutes a
  significant portion of the final course grade.

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CIS 370 Systems Analysis Design

• Goal Systems Analysis in the context of
  Significant Learning via Service Learning
• Students do analysis and design on a live
  system rather than study about analysis and
  design
• Course Web Site
• http//mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/saulnier/CIS203
  7020Home20Page.htm

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SL in Systems Analysis Design via the Albert
Schweitzer Institute at Quinnipiac University

• http//faculty.quinnipiac.edu/Schweitzer/
• Flash intro w/ several Schweitzer quotes
• Schweitzers artwork from Gabon and Haiti
• Calendar of Events
• Vehicles for Financial Support and Institutional
  Contact
• Link to PPT presentation for Director

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Significant Learning Foundation Knowledge

• Employs traditional text (Dennis Wixom) with
  exams over content
• Provides the basic understanding necessary for
  the other kinds of learning to evolve

15
Significant Learning - Application

• Work on real projects in real time
• Practice skills necessary to be successful
  analysts, engage in critical/creative problem
  solving, and manage projects in real time
  environment
• Allows other, higher ordered types of learning to
  become useful

16
Significant Learning - Integration

• Moves beyond realm of text into the realm of
  providing real systems for real people
• Students make connections between specific ideas,
  between whole realms of ideas, between people,
  and between different realms of life (e.g.
  school and work, school and social life)
• The act of making connections gives learners new
  kinds of power intellectual power

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Significant Learning Human Dimension

• Working for SL projects and reflecting on those
  experiences provide students with
• (1) a new definition of what it means to be
  human and
• (2) a new sense of responsibility for the human
  condition
• Acquire an appreciation for the human
  significance of what they are learning

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Significant Learning -- Caring

• SL experience sometimes changes the degree to
  which students care about something
• May be reflected in the form of new feelings,
  values, or interests
• Acquire the energy to learn more about the issue
  (e.g. homelessness, health care, world peace,
  etc.) and make it a part of their lives

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Significant Learning Learning How to Learn

• Reflective nature of SL experience teaches
  students something about the process of learning
  itself
• May learn how to be a better student, how to
  engage in a particular type of inquiry
  (observation, interview skills, etc.), or how to
  become self-directed learners
• Enables students to continue learning in the
  future and to do so with greater effectiveness

20
Conclusions

• We should be focusing at least as much on how we
  deliver the course content to students as we do
  on what should be taught
• Our concern should be to maximize student
  learning while simultaneously addressing larger
  societal and educational issues
• We need to be providing our students with the
  desire to become educated corporate and community
  citizens