Teaching Information Systems Management Skills: Using Integrated Projects and Case Studies

University courses in Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) are often criticized by industry for concentrating on conceptual learning while failing to provide their students with experience and grounding in managerial skills. This paper describes and discusses an innovative course In this paper the term “course” will be used to refer to a single integrated unit of study. In New Zealand such units are often referred to as “papers”. These courses can be combined together, according to various rules, to form a “course of study” which will lead to a qualification. At Massey University, a degree is comprised of 24 such courses.structure which has been developed in order to ground the teaching of IS management theory in its local context by interlinking practical projects and case studies in local organizations. The student projects are used to generate a large “cross-sectional” case study which describes several IS management problems that are occurring simultaneously in the same organization. Students are required to integrate their analysis of the problems and to recommend an appropriate series of responses which will tackle all the situations. The paper describes the rationale and organization of the course, the results of an evaluation of its effectiveness, and discusses some of the problems that were encountered during its implementation.     

Examining Secondary Special Education Teachers’ Literacy Instructional Practices

This study presents findings from a survey of secondary special education teachers who teach reading. Respondents were 577 special education teachers from a large Midwestern state who completed an online or mail survey. Results based on quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate predominant foci of secondary special education teachers’ reading instructional practices were teaching vocabulary and comprehension, engaging in ongoing formative assessment, and incorporating technology into instruction. Major themes included the widespread use of commercial reading programs and a bifurcation of instructional roles. These findings are discussed in relation to the national discourse on adolescent literacy and current schooling initiatives including the Common Core State Standards and Multi-tiered Systems of Support.     

The Cultural Work of Teacher Education

Engaging teacher education as cultural work positions teacher educators and pre-service teachers as cultural workers. Cultural workers foreground the cultural complexities of their situated experiences while aiming to produce cultures that transform prevailing inequalities and injustices in public education. Doctoral students are also cultural workers translating the world of academia and their role in it as they learn to educate teacher candidates. How doctoral candidates engage in this cultural work depends greatly on the degree to which their faculty mentors are able to reveal the contradictions and opportunities for expansive learning that co-exist within schools of education and individual departments such as curriculum and learning. This article looks at this conundrum from the perspectives of a doctoral student and a senior faculty member.     

The role of spatial ability in mixed reality learning with the HoloLens

The use of mixed reality in science education has been increasing and as such it has become more important to understand how information is learned in these virtual environments. Spatial ability is important in many learning contexts, but especially in neuroanatomy education where learning the locations and spatial relationships between brain regions is paramount. It is currently unclear what role spatial ability plays in mixed reality learning environments, and whether it is different compared to traditional physical environments. To test this, a learning experiment was conducted where students learned neuroanatomy using both mixed reality and a physical plastic model of a brain (N = 27). Spatial ability was assessed and analyzed to determine its effect on performance across the two learning modalities. The results showed that spatial ability facilitated learning in mixed reality (β = 0.21, P = 0.003), but not when using a plastic model (β = 0.08, P = 0.318). A non-significant difference was observed between the modalities in terms of knowledge test performance (d = 0.39, P = 0.052); however, mixed reality was more engaging (d = 0.59, P = 0.005) and learners were more confident in the information they learned compared to using a physical model (d = 0.56, P = 0.007). Overall, these findings suggest that spatial ability is more relevant in virtual learning environments, where the ability to manipulate and interact with an object is diminished or abstracted through a virtual user interface.