IT's Dirty Little Secret

Over break I'm catching up on my reading I neglected during the end of the Fall semester.  One of the articles I came across today was a Computerworld article about the age bias in IT.  This article reflects my observations of the IT industry during my time as an IT professional.

When looking at the IT field objectively, this age bias does make sense.  The new programmers are more apt to be adept with the most current technologies, willing to work for less money than required by older and more experienced IT professionals, and are able to dedicate more of their time towards work.  These factors make the younger programmers more appealing to employers.  However, older IT workers who move into system architect, IT management, or IT project manager roles are able to use their experience to their advantage.

IT workers must continually develop and refresh their skills in order to remain relevant and employable in the field.  This may require learning new programming languages, new architectures, or returning to school in preparation for potential management positions.  As a younger IT worker, the field of IT is fantastic since it offers the excitement of continual change and opportunities to learn and experience new technologies. Older workers need to remember this characteristic of the field and realize the constant change requires us to continually learn.  We must not loose our passion for learning or we are at risk to be left behind.

End of the Semester Reflection

Yesterday I hit the submit button and submitted my final set of grades for the Fall 2011 semester.  Now it is time to reflect on the past semester and try to learn from my experiences.  One of the habits I formed over the years is to immediately summarize the successes and challenges for each of my courses.  I create new notes in my Evernote notebooks so I can review these observations as I prepare for the next semester and the next time I teach the course.

I found these reflections to be beneficial to the continual improvement to my courses.  It is important that I conduct this reflection immediately after my course ends so that I am sure to capture these observations while they are still fresh in my mind.

Communicating with Students

I will have to admit that I sometimes reinforce the stereotype of  IT people that cannot communicate.  I am sometimes so focused on achieving goals and timelines that I forget about the importance of communications along the way.

Earlier today one of my undergraduate students was in my office and we were discussing the final project and how I was grading these projects.  During this discussion the student mentioned the frustration over my rejection of late assignments.  My policy for all of my courses is that I don't accept late assignments unless prior arrangements have been made.  The student described an instance where an absence prevented the student from submitting a homework assignment and that, during the next class, I did not accept this assignment for credit (although I offered to review the assignment and provide feedback).

After hearing this student's frustration I explained that I am trying to prepare the class for the working world where they would need to inform their employer in the event they were not able to come in or meet any deliverables.  It would be unacceptable to simply not show up.  I also reiterated my policy allows students to let me know ahead of time and make alternative arrangements in the event they are not able to meet the assignment due date.  After hearing this explanation, the student understood the reasoning and also agreed with the purpose and the approach.

In the future, I need to be more clear in explaining my policy to the students and help them understand the reasoning and encourage them to work with me.

Improving My Grading

It is that time of the semester when our students are busy submitting their final projects and taking our final exams.  Right now the hallways have quieted but there is still a lot of activity on campus as students near the end of the semester.

My courses ended on Monday so I have the remainder of the week to finish my grading (self-imposed deadline).  As I have noted in prior posts, I rely on rubrics to support my evaluation of the students' work.  These rubrics enable a more structured and consistent evaluation but I still find my evaluations include
 a level of subjectivity.  I also notice that while using the rubrics in my evaluations, I find issues with the coverage and criteria used in the rubrics.

Like many aspects of teaching, the grading and evaluation rubrics are a work in progress and we continually make incremental improvements.  I don't know if it is possible to completely systematically evaluate my students' work and remove all subjectivity but I hope I can continue to make progress in doing so.

Group Projects

Today was the last day before finals week at my college.  In many of our classes our students are submitting a final project; some of these final projects are group projects.  In many academic fields we prepare our students to work as productive team members.  This preparation aligns with the expectation the industry has regarding teamwork.  However, teamwork is not something that is magically possessed by our students; it must be learned.

Today one of my students met with me outside of class to express concerns for the overall quality of the team's final project.  This student felt frustrated by the lack of quality effort put forth by one of the team members and was concerned about the impact this project would have on the final grade.  While part of the grade is based on peer feedback, a poor quality project deliverable negatively affects all team members.

Assigning team projects can be both beneficial and frustrating to our students.  The students are dependent upon equal concern for quality of work and are often disappointed by the lack of effort or imbalance of work by the team members.  We must remember that these projects are evaluating the performance of a team and, while the individuals students may put forth a good effort, it is the ability to work as a team that is measured.  The students must be able to work together to collaborate on the project rather than divide up the work and work individually (does this sound familiar?).

While I can express the need for teamwork and articulate how teamwork over individual efforts are measured for these team projects, the students must still be taught how to work as a team.  Our department relies on team projects but we do not have a concerted effort to teach students on how to do so.  I need to begin incorporating the teamwork concepts in my courses so students may better understand how to operate as a team.

Newly Published Article

My work with the Graduate Nursing department has been published.  This article describes our approach to developing a new information system for use in tracking the clinical experiences of the graduate nursing students.

Friendships in Online Classrooms

Earlier this week I watched as the students in my class worked together on their projects and I noticed how well they know each other and enjoy working together.  I thought about the benefits of face-to-face classes in supporting this close interaction and how these students will continue their friendships beyond my class.

As I thought more about this, I see this same relationship building in the online environment too.  This past spring during our graduate symposium I noticed how well the students from our online program knew each other.  Although they had never met before in-person before the symposium, they seemed to have already established a bond.  Through the in-class discussion assignments, off-topic discussion threads, and email outside of the classes, the students found a way to connect and get to know each other.

Maybe these close relationships occur regardless of the location of the classroom.

Will Others Follow?

A couple of weeks ago my copy of eWeek included a cover page explaining a big change to the technology magazine.  Beginning in January 2012, the magazine is moving to an electronic format and will be delivered twice a week rather than once a week.  This new model will reduce printing and delivery costs and enable the publisher to provide more timely information.

When I learned of this change I immediately downloaded the eWeek app for my iPad and read the current issue on my iPad.  I am already using my iPad to read the PM Network magazine and will now be able to also read the eWeek magazine too.  However, unlike the PM Network magazine, the eWeek magazine will no longer be delivered in the paper format.

After reading the PM Network magazine on my iPad over the past few months, I found myself simply recycling the physical copy of the magazine when as soon as it arrived and am now experiencing the same effect with my physical copies of eWeek.  The reading experience on the iPad is very nice since it doesn't require long periods of time reading the backlit screen and offers very clear and bright images.  When I open the iPad magazine app I am first presented with a layout view of the entire magazine before I select where I want to begin reading.  Also, the digital copy is in the same format as the physical copy so I'm very comfortable reading this on my iPad.

So far I'm very happy with this change and am pleased to be able to keep my magazine library with me on my iPad.  I hope other magazines will follow eWeek's lead by offering iPad (or other tablet) versions of their publications.  I wonder if we are beginning to see a shift in how people consume these publications and, if this shift does take place, I wonder about any repercussions from this change.

Stress of Finals Week

We are nearing the end of the semester and I'm preparing my undergraduate students for their final in my Database Modeling class.  Over the past semester we have covered topics including relational theory, data modeling techniques, SQL, and several enterprise-scale database implementation topics.

Now we are nearing the end and it is time for the final exam.  This is where my dilemma and guilt begins.  I see how much stress the students are under this time of year and wish I could avoid adding to their stress.  However, the goal of our assessments are to measure their performance against the course outcomes so, while these assessment measures are not always fun, they must be carried out.  These exams serve a purpose and are more than just a rite of passage for college students.

Where I struggle in my classes is deciding the relative weight the final exam has on the student's final grade for the course.  I make this determination before the course begins but I always have second thoughts when I get to the end of the course.  A few years ago I read a book about college-level teaching where one of the book's contributors expressed a teaching philosophy that true assessments measure the student's knowledge and abilities at the end of the course rather than at a certain point during the course.  In recent years I have adopted this philosophy in my undergraduate courses and have heavily weighted the final exam.

While I see the logic in placing higher weighting on the final exam, I also question the validity of measuring student performance at any one point in time.  Perhaps the final exam is a valuable measure but there needs to be more equal distribution of measures across the semester.  I'll have to think about this further and see if I change my philosophy on the final exam.

Rubrics - The New Blackboard Function

My college upgraded our Blackboard software over the Thanksgiving holiday.  For those of you not familiar with Blackboard, it is a learning management system that is used to facilitate student access to online course materials, on-line quizzes and tests, and assignment submissions. One of the new features in this upgrade was grading rubrics.  I have been waiting for rubrics for some time now.  Before the merged WebCT/Blackboard software product, we used WebCT and this software included support for grading rubrics.  However, the migration to Blackboard resulted in a loss of these rubrics (Blackboard did not support rubrics) but now Blackboard has finally included this functionality in their software and I have access to rubrics again.

I updated my assignments for the remainder of the semester to use these rubrics.  After applying these rubrics to my assignments I have some opinions about Blackboard's first attempt at grading rubrics.  First of all, I was very impressed with Blackboard's first attempt at grading rubrics.  They had obviously learned from WebCT rubrics.  The rubrics allow the instructor to use single point values, point ranges, or percentage of points.  The rubrics are able to be modified to support as many rows (criteria) or columns (levels of achievement) as well as the individual criteria.  Grading is made easy by simply clicking on the appropriate cell in the rubric and selecting the points.  The rubric also supports comments for each evaluation cell in the rubric as well as summary comments below the rubric.

While there is much to like about this new function.  There are still some improvements I would like to see.  First of all, there is not an option to add descriptions to the criteria so I'm not able to describe what I'm looking for as part of each evaluation criteria.  Secondly, the rubrics don't automatically populate the total points for the assignment.  The rubrics tally the points and display the total but this total is not added to the points cell in the assignment.  I would like to see this total added with the ability to override the total.

This is an awfully long post for a discussion on the new grading rubrics but this is a big deal for me since I have been waiting for so long for this functionality to return.  I'm happy with the new function but there is still room for improvement.