March 09, 2007
Using an On Line Forum for Student Participation
Yesterday I talked with Professor James Sager of Cal State University / Chico. Professor Sager teaches intro to MIS to sections of three to four hundred students. He wants class participation, but realizes that many students will be intimated by such a large group. So, instead, he requires the students to participate in online forums. As he explains here, the students earn 15% of their grade based on their forum participation. You can see the forum itself here.
I asked him if grading participation for so many students is a problem and he explained that he's written software to compute students' scores:
"At present I give students 12 points for each original posting (new thread) and 4 points for each of their reviews/rating of their peers postings. In total, they can earn 148 points which amounts for roughly 15% of their grade in the course. The forum software that I use is based on an open-source product called JForum (http://www.jforum.net/). I've modified the base software in a couple of important respects and it should probably be modified even further to make it a better facility for classroom use (I can think of a couple of annoyances that I'd love to resolve). Also, my version is based on a slightly older release than the current 2.1.7 product. For grading, I wrote a servlet that interrogates the JForum database and calculates students' point totals automatically. I started to do the job manually once and quickly realized that I could write the software and do the job automatically before I would finish the job looking at the data by hand.
"Sometime in the future, I'd like to explore creating a "Semantic Forum" that would use Latent Semantic Analysis technology (paper here) to analyze student postings real-time and disallow postings that are off topic or trivial. Currently, I use simple minimum word requirements in scoring. I don't have any automated content analysis, but a posting such as "I Agree" doesn't count in a student's point total.
"My current grading scheme takes into account peer reviews but doesn't incorporate an instructor-based quality assessment. That would be another use for LSA - i.e. generating a automated relevance score. It wouldn't be as reliable as instructor evaluation, but it would at least be manageable. Without an automated scheme, using a forum for a couple hundred students would be an absolute nightmare. The more of the teaching drudgery that I can automate the better. That way I get to concentrate on the fun stuff."Oh yes, the reason that I chose JForum were (1) it's open source and (2) it's written primarily in Java. Because we teach our programming classes in the MIS program in Java, and because I'm therefore fairly familiar with that language, I'm able to tweak the software to my requirements without an undue amount of pain."I have some additional rationale for using the forum, much of which is outlined in an old internal research grant proposal from a couple of years ago. See the attachment (here). Unfortunately, the research wasn't funded, but I went ahead and put something together anyway. I especially like the peer review aspect of the forum requirement because it absolves me from being the sole source of feedback in the course. Anyway, you may also share the grant document if you like. I do have a current research project concerning forum use for which I have collected student survey data, but I don't think any of the language in that proposal is particularly proprietary
"At Chico State, we use WebCT Vista as the campus course management system and there is a forum facility built into the latest Vista version. I haven't yet explored its features, but I have that on my agenda for a slow day (the kind of day that rarely seems to come my way). Meanwhile, I'll probably keep using my JForum-based system, in part because it is very much like other online forums that students might encounter on the Web."
I found this fascinating. The automated grading aspects would pertain to online courses as well, maybe even better. You can contact Jim at: JSager1@csuchico.edu
Posted by DavidK at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2007
Well, (5) * (3) = 15, Doesn't It?
Many years ago, I was working at a university with a research center that was developing a new general ledger system. That was back in the mainframe days, and at the time, most organizations developed their own software, even G/L, in house. So, they hired a group of students to help develop the system. The center had a number science students who needed summer employment, so they hired them to help develop the general ledger system.
Things went along swimmingly until the first major review. The accounts would not sum correctly. Eventually, the problem was traced to the code that one of the science students had written. Turned out he didn't understand that, in a financial application, numbers in parentheses, like ($12,345), have a special significance. His code ignored the parentheses.
Which brings me to the career question of this week:
What does a systems analyst need to know?
Posted by DavidK at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
Q8 of 25 Questions about a Career in IS
What Does a Systems Analyst Need to Know?
A systems analyst is a cultural broker. A systems analyst meets with the users and learns their goals and objectives, their processes, and their information needs. A background in business will enable the systems analyst to learn business needs quickly and effectively. Without such a background, his or her ignorance will slow the project unacceptably, or will cause silly mistakes like the one above.
For example, consider a systems analyst that is working with, say, a manufacturing department. At a requirements meeting, that analyst is likely to hear terms like MRP or MRP II or just-in-time inventory. The discussion might involve the number of turns in finished goods inventory and how inventory holding costs seem to high for that number of turns.
Without a background in business, the systems analyst will be unable to follow the discussion. And, the team expects the systems analyst to be able to contribute to the discussion -- adding insights into what kind of information is needed to solve that problem, and the likely availability of the data to produce that information.
At the same time, once the systems analyst understands the business requirements, he or she then meets with technical people to explain what needs to be done. The analyst must be able to develop data models, to participate in database design, to understand how computer programmers will go about creating the information system, to know what an effective test plan is, to understand how the system should be implemented, and so forth. The analyst needs to have sufficient background in technology to be able to reject ideas that are clearly infeasible, whether from cost, organizational, schedule, or technical reasons.
So, a systems analyst needs to be able to bridge the world of business and the world of information technology.
It is a fascinating and ever so interesting a job!
Posted by DavidK at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)