Service-Learning Project to Enhance Decision Support System Learning
Barbara A. Schuldt, Ph.D. CCP
Associate Professor of Management
Department of Management
Southeastern Louisiana University
ABSTRACT
Upon evaluating curriculum and community needs, it was determined that both the students and the community could benefit from a mobile computer laboratory to help facilitate decision making. This laboratory could be taken out into the community and students could facilitate organizations with decision making. Service-learning pedagogy was evaluated to be the best approach to meet both needs. This paper describes service-learning as applied to this project.
SERVICE-LEARNING PROJECT TO ENHANCE
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM LEARNING
INTRODUCTION
As part of an ongoing assessment of the curriculum, it was determined that the program could be strengthened by incorporating “real world” applications into the course work. Although this had been done through case studies, the students were still only looking for the correct answer and not understanding that there may not be only one answer, nor may there be a correct answer at least not one that is easily determined initially. Hind sight, as applicable to case studies’, improves one’s ability to find the correct answer. In addition, our community was facing many challenges as an aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many for-profit, not-for-profit and governmental organizations were struggling to assess their situations, solve problems, make decisions, and develop action plans. How could our students be involved as part of their course work and was it appropriate to integrate this work into the curriculum? Following personal experiences and research on bringing “real world” projects into the classroom, service-learning pedagogy was evaluated to be the best way to meet this objective by using a structured, proven approach.
Service-learning was defined in Service-Learning in Higher Education by Barbara Jacoby and Associates (1996, p. 5) as follows:
“Service-learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development. Reflection and reciprocity are key concepts in service-learning.”
Service-learning pedagogy provided the structure for the integration of community problems and challenges with course work. This integration established a beneficial relationship among the students, university and community.
In assessing how to practically integrate service-learning into course work while benefiting the community, the idea of a mobile computer laboratory emerged. Given the needs of the region several grant opportunities were applicable to help fund the laboratory. Two grants were funded[1] and the result was the implementation of a mobile computer laboratory named “Mobile ThinkTank System.” Notebook computers, group support software to aid in group decision making processes, and service-learning were the focus of two grant applications. The very name of the lab was derived by students using ThinkTank™, a group support software application from Group Systems, Inc.
The specific objectives stated in the grants were two fold: one) to help Southeastern Louisiana by having a mobile computer laboratory function as an advanced electronic meeting place where students, faculty, and communities’ members can meet for collaboration and problem solving; and two) to use this facility to encourage students and faculty to participate in service-learning while promoting the value of service-learning among potential partners in our community.
This paper will provide a brief literature review and then a discussion on the phases of implementing service-learning into the curriculum.
LITERATURE REVIEW
A brief summary of the service-learning research as it applied to this situation is discussed. Then the relevance of group support software (GSS) and specifically a GSS application called ThinkTank™ from Group Systems, Inc. will be presented.
Service-Learning
Information systems are often taught as a theory course where the students learn the concepts and applicable software, but the real value of the information systems course is being able to apply the concepts and theories. The students need to be able to go from the classroom, to an organization, assess a situation, and determine the appropriate approach for the situation. This can be difficult to teach. So the question is how to get the students to see the importance of not just answering questions on an exam or case study, but to see that “real world” work environments are chaotic. In addition, to see that the concepts learned in class do have value, but only if applied successfully. As stated in the introduction, one methodology to help students make this transition is service-learning.
Bringle and Hatcher’s (1996, p. 222) definition of service-learning is:
“A course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity in such a way that meets identified community needs, and reflect on the service activity in such a way to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhance sense of civic responsibility.”
This definition points out that service-learning must meet the needs of the community while reinforcing the concepts and theories being taught.
Outside of professional disciplines the focus of service-learning is on changing the students perspectives about society, issues related to societal changes and community activism. Information systems curriculum does not focus on changing students’ societal perspective but on helping students to successfully participate within organizational contexts (Kreth, 2005). The service-learning pedagogy adopted reflects this client-based pedagogy. According to Ann Blakeslee (2001, p. 170), students doing projects for clients “potentially preserve more of the culture of the workplace, while allowing students to address a variety of audiences.” As a consequence these projects can be “useful transitional experiences that bridge classroom and workplace contexts for students and expose them gradually to workplace practices and genres” (Blakeslee, 2001, p. 170). This became the core of the grant applications and provided the structure to have students do service-learning through the use of the Mobile ThinkTank System.
Service-learning is germane in business education. As pointed out by Edward Zlotkowski (1996, pg. 5) “a major criticism of contemporary business education centers on its failure to help business students achieve sufficient educational breath, particularly with regard to the external environment of business.” In addition he felt that while the use of cases, role playing, projects, team exercises imitate the real-world, they “only approximate the ‘culture’ and complexity of non-academic situations (pg. 7).” It is important for students to develop an understanding of organizations and societal issues. Including not only how their actions impact the outcomes, but that unintended results can happen.
Examples in business-related disciplines include service-learning applied in an intermediate accounting course (Gujarathi and McQuade, 2002) used to meet the AICPA core competencies (Tschopp, 2004), affect the creativity in economics (Hervani and Helms, 2004), enhance student learning in strategic management courses (Angelidis, et al., 2004), augment business communication courses (Littlefield, 2006 and Kreth, 2005) and in international experiences in MBA programs (Alon, 2004 and Coffey and Wang, 2006). Other researchers have presented the critiques of service-learning in management programs (Kolenko, et al., 1996), and how the institution can adopt a culture that not only supports service-learning but institutionalizes to the credit of the university (Burback, 2005, Christensen, 2006, Dean, 2005, Getchel, 2005, and Zlotkowski, 1996)
In information systems courses, service-learning was applied to facilitate students helping local non-profit and government agencies as they related to course topics, such as database design (Hoxmeier and Lenk, 2003). Eugene Rathswohl (2001) connected his students in management information systems courses with a local high school to provide tutoring in the software applications they were using in class. This reinforced the students’ knowledge and skills as well as improving their communication abilities.
Group Support Systems
Group support systems are an expansion of decision support system used by managers. Management is a practice in which organizational goals are achieved through the use of resources - people, assets, and time. Management must make choices about the allocation of limited resources to best achieve the organization’s goals. This usually involves deciding between two or more alternatives with indefinite outcomes. Decision support software can help managers make decisions by bringing together data from multiple sources along with models to help analyze this data. Managers need support from computerized systems due to their need to explore and compare many multifaceted alternatives, time pressures to make a quick decision, convoluted data analysis requirements, and the information required may not be available at the site of the decision maker. A group support system is an interactive computer-based system that supports the method of discovering solutions by more than one decision maker.
One problem with group work relates to the size of the group – the larger the number in the group the less cohesiveness and the propensity to form internal coalitions. There can be a tendency to have “groupthink” where creativity is not as important as unanimity of the group. In addition gender can play a role because different skills are seen as having various values by the group and not all skills are appreciated uniformly. Women perceive cooperation more important than dominating or having their ideas heard. Group support systems are designed to minimize these problems with group work.
There are numerous forces driving group support system development, such as, need to increase group productivity, reduce the number and length of meetings, and need to accommodate virtual organizations (time and place differences) and the accessibility of networked computers using the Internet protocol (TCP/IP). This need for better group support systems led to the development of ThinkTank™ recently introduced by Group Systems Inc. Of the several group support systems on the market ThinkTank™ was selected to best meet the objectives of this project. The next section discusses ThinkTank™.
ThinkTank™
ThinkTank™ is the latest evolution of group support software that incorporated verified tools and processes in one easy to use dynamic interface. The software is from Group Systems Inc, (http://www.groupsystems.com/). ThinkTank™ offers a number of capabilities for groups to work together in a computer-mediated environment. It is browser (web) based and can be used for fact-to-face meetings or for virtual sessions (participants at different locations). It supports brainstorming, organizing, prioritizing, evaluating, identifying, and documenting of ideas that save time and improve productivity. It facilitates decision making as a collaboration group process. Electronically captured session notes and voting results are easily exported into MS Word or HTML formats.
Potential activities using ThinkTank™ include strength/weakness/ opportunity/threat (SWOT) analysis, exploring the impacts of a strategic plan or proposed policies, developing consensus within a group by pinpointing areas of agreement and disagreement, evaluating employees’ job performance, prospective job candidate selection, generating and prioritizing budget items, projects, or requirements for services or products, allocating resources among departments, projects, services, or products, and determining action plans.
ThinkTank™ was selected for this project since from product reviews it appeared to be the best match for our application and the grant authors had experience with this software package.
The grant provided funding to set up the mobile computer laboratory project. The next section of the paper explains the project phases.
PROJECT PHASES
Initial Phase
The initial phase of this project was to determine curriculum and community needs. Once these needs were specified, then it was important to determine how to meet the community needs, improve the curriculum, and advance the training and skills of students.
The identified community need was to help our region with the many challenges faced by an explosive population growth in the region after hurricane Katrina. The curriculum need was to expand the students’ knowledge and skills by using additional applications software and to help them realize the relevance of understanding how organizations implement software applications in complex business environments.
After the needs were identified, offering a mobile computer laboratory was determined to be a way that resources could be taken into the community by trained students which would help both the community and students. From research in our community most of the organizations were facing decision making about current resource allocations, future resource needs, and action plans to help meet goals. Group support system software would assist students’ in undergirding the community’s efforts to meet today’s and future requirements.
To create the mobile computer laboratory outside funding needed to be obtained, since the University was faced with their own financial challenges after the hurricane. Two grants were applied for and both were funded. This moved the project on to the implementation phase.
Implementation Phase
Once funds were secured, purchase requisitions were completed, and the notebook computers, software, projector, printer and screen were delivered. Additionally, training was needed to manage the group support system software. Carts to secure and transport the notebook computers were also purchased.
During the spring 2007 semester, training of students began. A cohort of students in database management and decision support system classes practiced using ThinkTank™ as a participant and then as the facilitator of a session.
These students learned many things from these experiences. When asked what they learned by doing ThinkTank™ sessions, students from the decision support systems class had these comments:
· “How to network with a system and use information to get results to process a solution or to get a better perspective on an issue;
· Setting a session up and running is not as hard as it first seemed, but when I did a couple it was pretty easy;
· The system is very effective for organizing things with a group and to me one of the most organized systems I have ever dealt with;
· ThinkTank is fun!;
· I need to better prepare for the presentation as facilitator;
· Organizing my ideas to not just myself but how to relate them so others can understand my material;
· Practice, practice, practice;
· To expect the snags; to be patient with others;
· Collaboration is more productive because of anonymity;
· Everyone is entitled to their own opinion;
· Go slower and speak slower
· To dress a little better, clothes make the professional, no hat, shirt tucked in
· It is more productive than typical face to face meetings, and provides detailed accurate reports; and
· Taking control of the group is not as easy as it looks.”