Moving

It has been awhile since I posted to this blog.  Over the past month I have seen many good conversations taking place in Google+ and LinkedIn.  Perhaps these are better mediums for not only sharing information but also participating in discussions.  I am planning to spend my online time participating in conversation in these two social platforms and will no longer post to this blog.  I believe conversations will also us to better share tacit knowledge than the explicit knowledge I'm producing in this blog.

You can find me in Google+ or LinkedIn as Brandon Olson.  I hope you converse with you there.

Project Portfolio Management at PMI

Last Thursday I gave a presentation titled Project Portfolio Management and Business Value at the northwest outreach meeting for the Minnesota chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI).  In this presentation I focused on shifting the project manager's operational perspective of projects to a more strategic perspective and used the term value to represent a strategic metric.

My concern is that project management is too focused on defining project success as meeting the functional, budgetary, and schedule goals.  These goals or project variables are often used to determine the project's success.  However, these goals represent success at the operational level of the organization.  This simply means the project was executed as planned and does not imply the affect the project had on the organization.

My argument is that a more strategic approach should be used to evaluate a project's success.  The value created as a result of the project is more important than the completion of the project.  I used the example of a new information systems project that was operationally successful although the new system resulted in a 21% decrease in operating capacity; the organization now processes 21% less than before the system project.  This is a decrease in value even though the project would be considered a success.  Is it really a success for the organization?

While we cannot ignore the operational project metrics we must do a better job of evaluating and measuring value in our projects.  As project managers we should want to make sure our projects are both successfully executed and also generates new value for the organization.

Focus Group

Last week I conducted a focus group to evaluate the Master of Arts in IT Leadership program curriculum.  We also determined the skills and knowledge our graduates need to be prepared for leadership positions within the IT organization or as enterprising functional managers applying IT to their business units.  The focus group consisted of alumni, current students, and members of the IT profession.  I was very impressed with the results of this focus group.

Together our group identified the types of individuals that this graduate program would serve and revised the program's mission to match the purpose of our degree.  All of this set the groundwork for our most important activity: to identify the desired outcomes for the program.  These items were not the official program outcomes but rather the knowledge areas and skills our students should have developed when graduating from the program.  Our group identified many great areas that we need to address in the curriculum and while quickly arriving at a consensus on these knowledge and skill topics.

I found this focus group activity very enlightening and am so pleased with the results.  It was a great experience to hear from IT practitioners on their needs and have them participate in the process of designing the curriculum for our program.  Our new curriculum will make the program even more relevant and will provide greater value for our graduates.  What a great success!

What are we thinking?

My office is located right off of a busy hallway and across from several classrooms.  As a result, there is often a lot of activity and noise right outside of my office door.  Most of the times this does not represent a problem as it is nice to see all of the activity of the students and faculty in the building.  However, there are times where I need to shut my office door so that I may concentrate on reading, grading, or other more mentally taxing activities.

I'm very fortunate to have a single office with a door.  When I need to, I'm able to close out the noise and create a relatively peaceful environment where I can concentrate.  Unfortunately, this office environment does not exist for many people in the workforce.  A recent article I read reminded me again of this issue and made me start thinking about the office environment for the typical professional.

Our workforce today is predominantly a knowledge workforce.  We commonly work with data and information to generate knowledge.  Our knowledge may be used as a service for our customers or may support our decision making within the organization.  We also quite often work as part of a project team which requires careful planning and response to changing conditions.  The knowledge and project environments require us to draw upon our intellect and experiences to produce high quality work.

My point here is that we really need to be able to think in our jobs.  We need to be able to problem solve, formulate creative solutions, and plan our actions.  While there exists a significant need to use our intelligence in the workplace, the workplace does not seem to be conducive to a more thoughtful environment.  Our cubicles and open office environments contribute to a culture of collaboration but this is at the expense of our ability to conduct more deep thinking.  There exists times where we need to work with our teams but there also exists many times where we need time to think; where do we find the environment and the time where we can think?

Value of Tags

Yesterday I met with the faculty in the IT Leadership program.  During our meeting we discussed some useful web-based resources to enhance our online courses.  As part of this discussion we decided it would be useful to develop a type of library of links to these online resources.  I agreed and volunteered to develop a way to share these links with the group.

Today I went back to my Delicious account that has been idle for many months to begin adding links to some of the sites we identified the day before.  While adding these links I decided I didn't want everyone to have to go through all my links to find those relevant to teaching but rather simply find those links related to teaching resources.  This is where tags came in.

I created a new "faculty" tag and added this tag to existing teaching resource links as well as links to the new resources we identified the day before.  The beauty of this tagging approach is I can now use a unique URL that will filter all of my Delicious links to display only those tagged as faculty.  The URL http://www.delicious.com/bolson1/faculty points to the faculty tagged items my Delicious account.  The tags enable me create virtual tag lists within my Delicious account.  Additionally, I can use multiple tags for any given link and it will appear in multiple lists.

I know this is nothing new but I was excited to have the opportunity to take advantage of the tagging function in Delicious.

It isn't the Project Manager

In my previous post I responded to an article in PM Network about the use of strategic business alignment, or what I refer to as business value, as a project variable.  In this article the author called upon the project manager to be more business-aware and consider the project's affect on the organization's strategies.  While I completely agree with the need for increased viability of business value and the use of business value as a project management variable, I think the author is not correct in calling out the project manager to make this change.  It is not the project manager that must move towards a business-value centered project but rather the entire organization; or at least the project management office.

First of all, project management is an operational position.  This individual is tasked with planning, executing, controlling, and evaluating a project.  This means the project manager is focused on a single project and working towards its completion.  Secondly, business value needs to be aligned with the organization's strategies and these strategies should determine those projects that are funded.  Proper business alignment means that each project is associated with a strategic objective or goal.  As a result, the existence of the project should imply some form of strategic value.

The strategic value should be articulated in the project charter and, therefore, should become a success measure for the project.  The sponsors and strategic leaders of the organization should have already established the strategic value for the project.  The project manager should shift her/his perspective to consider this strategic value but the project manager it not in a position to move the organization to a business value-centered project management practice.

While I appreciate the points the author made in the article.  I believe this article should be targeted toward a different audience; strategic managers and directors of project management offices.

The Fourth (and most important) Variable of Project Management

Project management has long been associated with managing the three project variables: budget, time, and functionality.  These variables have traditionally defined a project success.  A project delivering all desired functionality on time and within budget is considered a success.  However, I consider this the operational perspective of project management.  In this perspective the project is a success when the project is executed as planned.

However, there exists a strategic perspective for project management where these variables do not define success.  A project must create the type of change needed in the organization to realize the desired business value.  Delivering business value is the true strategic measure for the strategic view of project management.  Although budget, functionality, and timeliness are important in the strategic view, these factors do not entirely affect the influence the project has on the organization.

Consider an IT project that is operationally successful.  The new system is delivered as expected, within budget, and on time; it is a successful project.  However, what if the organization does not adopt the new system or what if the new system does not provide the information or improvements needed to realize the benefits (or value) to the organization?  The project is an operational success but a strategic failure.

Business value is the strategic variable of project management.  A recent article in PM Network describes this new dimension.  However, the article takes the approach that it is the project manager that must adopt this new dimension.  I disagree with this approach and in my next post I'll explain why.

Systems Thinking View of Failure

Today I read an article about the rebirth of business process re-engineering (BPR).  In this article the author described the large BPR projects of the 1990s as expensive and producing disappointing results.  Looking at the immediate return on investments for these projects I would have to agree with the author.  However, looking at a long-term and systems thinking view of these BPR projects; I completely disagree with the author.

The driving force behind the 1990s BPR projects was the emergence of large enterprise systems (like SAP).  These software packages replaced the silos of information systems supporting each of the business units in the organization.  The new enterprise systems enabled data to flow from one area of the firm to other areas of the firm to produce a more complete view of the organization's processes and information.  These systems and corresponding BPR projects removed the silos within the organization and enabled new information and knowledge to be formulated from multiple units across the organization.

We are now benefiting from the application of data warehousing and other forms of business intelligence technologies and processes.  If our organizations had continued to operate in the silos that existed in the pre-BPR era, we would not be able to accomplish our goals with business intelligence since the data would not be in a form that would support integration and business process perspectives.

My point is that while the immediate benefits of BPR may have not lived up to expectations, the results of BPR have enabled organizations to make better use of information and knowledge and also supported the emergence of business intelligence.  In order to better evaluate innovation we need to be able to view and evaluate our projects from a more global and systems perspective.

Now Hiring

Last spring our undergraduate CS/CIS department received approval for a new tenure track faculty position.  This fall we hope to interview and hire a new faculty member to start either the Spring 2013 or Fall 2013 semester.  The information about this new position is posted on our jobs site.

Evernote is PKM

This month's copy of KMWorld included an article about Evernote as a PKM tool.  In the article, the author described Evernote users as either individuals using specific functions within the service or those who us it as a one-stop personal knowledge repository.  I certainly fall in the latter category; those that use it for everything.

In my Evernote account I maintain notebooks for my research, courses, college-related items, projects, and personal items.  I am then able to search across notebooks to find anything or use the tagging function to select a group of related times.  For instance, today I added an Evernote note about a BI article I read that relates to my BI course.  I included a hyperlink to the article in this note, tagged it with tags of BI and the course number, and described how the article could be useful.  This note is now added to my collection of BI articles, and other notes related to either BI or my BI course.

This example and the functionality in the tool represents an ideal environment for a personal knowledge management repository.  This PKM environment will continue to grow.  With all of the new functionality being added to Evernote (Skitch, Clearly, and a whole catalog of third party integrated applications in the Trunk store) it is quickly becoming a PKM platform.

Communicating Business Value in BI

Today was our first day of classes for the new academic year.  My day started with an 8:00 AM Business Intelligence class.  This is a new class and I'm really excited to teach it this year.  The class size is smaller than I typically teach but creates some great opportunities to interact with a smaller group of students.

Anyway, during class today we tried to define business intelligence.  Along the way I referenced some examples of the type of business problems BI can be used to address.  One of our textbooks for the class provided some great examples of business problems addressed by BI: customer market segment identification, promotion response, lifetime customer profitability, fraud detection, customer churn risk, and customer channel optimization.

These examples provided a great segue into a discussion about business value and IT investments.  Fortunately, the textbook provided several examples of problems related to CRM data that can be directly tied to increased sales or decreased losses.  Using these examples we were able to see how effective BI practices can be quantified into business value.

I really want these students to understand value as a type of metric for their future projects.  In addition to the common triple constraint, IT professionals need to evaluate project outcomes in terms of business value.  Hopefully, having an early start to considering business value in their studies will make value metrics easier to apply once they graduate.

Project Charter Ownership

As usual, I'm tring to catch-up on my reading.  Today I came across an interesting article on change management for projects.  It is good to see an article focusing on change management although the article did not go far enough to stress using change measures as a project performance indicator.

Anyway, as you can see by the title of this post, I'm not focusing on change management measures but rather the project charter ownership.  In this article, the author presented a case where an organization implemented a formalized process where project leaders prepared a one page outline of the project to summarize the project's value to the organization, the project outcomes, and the alignment of the project outcomes to strategic objectives.  This outline was then provided to the steering committee to evaluate current and proposed projects.

First of all, I like how this organization simplified a formalized project charter down to essential components that are used in the steering committee's project evaluation.  This one page outline reduces the overhead of a more detailed and formalized project charter so the project teams should be more likely to comply with the process.  Also, by providing a highly summarized format for the project charter, the steering committee will be able to quickly assess the projects and, due to the standardized outline, easily compare projects to determine which projects to fund.

My issue with this process is where the ownership of this project charter was placed.  The organization required the project managers to develop this outline.  I feel this ownership is misplaced.  This is a good opportunity to engage the project sponsor in the project.  It is the project sponsor that should be responsible for developing the simple project charter.  The sponsor should be responsible for identifying the value to the organization, the project goals, and the project alignment with the strategic objectives.  The project sponsor needs to own a part of this project charter and developing a simple one page project charter is a great opportunity to ensure the sponsor is involved in the direction of the project.

Perhaps I'm overreacting and the organization simply infers the project manager is responsible for this project charter document and it is implied the project sponsor is involved in developing the charter.  I just think the importance of engaging the project sponsor should be emphasized by placing ownership of this project deliverable with the project sponsor.

iPad Keyboard

As an IT professional and an academic, I typically need to read a lot to stay up-to-date in the field.  This sometimes means reading RSS feeds from blogs and technology news sites.  However, this often means reading technology journals and magazines.  Quite often I come across new information that I will want to be able to refer back to.  For this reason, I use my Evernote account to capture my notes and evaluations of the articles I read.  Using this approach I'm able to include a URL to the original article in my Evernote note and have quick access to my notes through a search of my Evernote notebooks.

I also like to read while away from my desk.  This means I don't use my computer to capture my notes and evaluations of the articles but rather my iPad.  I use Evernote on my iPad to record my notes from the articles.  In the past, I used the iPad on-screen keyboard to type in my notes.  However, this method is slower than a keyboard and results in more errors.  I think I found the solution.

Earlier this month I purchased a new keyboard cover for my iPad.  With the keyboard cover I'm able to quickly open my iPad and use this keyboard to enter my notes.  This new configuration resembles a type of ultranotebook (like Macbook Air) but I'm also easily able to remove the tablet (attached using magnets) from the keyboard and use the iPad in its original form.  Pretty slick.

Preparing for Business Intelligence Class

In a few short weeks I will begin teaching an undergraduate course in business intelligence.  Business intelligence (aka BI) and the corresponding topics within the field have been around for while but under different names.  With the new language and concepts I was unsure my knowledge of legacy concepts and implementations were still valid so I began preparing for the class by searching for introduction-level articles on the BI field.

I was immediately successful in locating a great introductory source.  The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a professional organization in the IT field, put together what they refer to as Tech Packs as a form of overview for a select group of topics.  In the library of Tech Packs I found a Tech Pack for BI.  This set of overviews and annotated bibliographies provided a great introduction to the BI field and included many references for further reading.  Using this Tech Pack I was able to confirm my understanding of the topics and now feel I have a good solid foundation to begin working with my textbooks to teach the course.

I still have a lot to do to prepare for the course and a lot of learning along the way.  Since this is my first iteration with this new course it will be a JIT (just-in-time) design and development over the semester.  I'm looking forward to the challenge of the course and the excitement to be learning more about BI.

Advisory Board

Over the past month I recruited and engaged an advisory board for our new Master of Science in Project Management program.  Our board met last week to provide input into the program outcomes and the curriculum.  During this meeting one of my colleagues at the college facilitated a dialog circle to capture the board member's input on the project management profession and our program outcomes.  This proved to be a very effective technique in eliciting input from a group.

I am now in the process of formulating the program outcomes and finalizing the course sequence for the program.  The input from the advisory board proved useful in both validating my design for the program as well as pointing out gaps in my initial design.

Incorporating the advisory board into the program design process adds more work and increased the schedule.  However, the program design will be dramatically improved by integrating all of the perspectives offered by the board.  I am very pleased with the contributions from the board.

Project Portfolio Management

I presented an updated version of my project portfolio management workshop for the Duluth Chamber of Commerce last week.  This presentation was a part of their professional development series offered to the local business community.  Here is a link to my slides.

Understanding Project Portfolio Management

In preparing for a workshop I'm conducting next month I read an article today where I found myself arguing with the author.  In the article PPM: Project Propaganda Management? Mullaly attempted to simplify project portfolio management (PPM) as three dimensions: evaluate, prioritize and select projects to undertake; monitor project performance; ensure benefits are realized.  The author argued PPM is simply a higher level of project management needed to address the lack of operational decision making and micromanaging executives.

Yes, PPM is an extension of project management and, while it mirrors the processes of project management, it does so at a higher level.  However, the author failed to recognize that project portfolio managers do work at the executive level and, therefore, are influenced by the organization's executives.  This level ensures alignment with the organization's strategies.  Additionally, the author missed another important component of PPM: integration and resource management.

PPM is used to ensure resources are properly allocated across all programs and projects within the organization.  It is also carried out to ensure interfaces between projects and programs are coordinated.  This level of management reaches beyond the simple select, monitor, evaluate dimensions the author used.

One more very important attribute of PPM.  As a byproduct of the PPM implementation, if it is implemented properly, is business value rather than the schedule/cost/functionality metrics become the main measure of success.  Traditionally, "successful" projects are completed on-time, on-budget, with the correct functionality.  The point is that if the organization can't realize the intended benefits is it really a successful project?  Properly implemented PPM moves project evaluation to business value rather than satisfying the project management variables.

Change Management and Agile Project Management

I came across a great explanation on the virtue of agile project management in the context of change management.

"I believe agile projects accommodate this uncertainty better.  Fixed time boxes equal fixed schedule.  Dedicated full-time team equals fixed budget.  Scope is left flexible.  The customer prioritizes scope.  If you focus on highest business value first, delivered in regular intervals within a fixed budget, does i really matter if the scope changed?"

I found this quote from Jennifer Bleen to be a very concise way of conceptualizing the advantage of agile project management.  The quote also helps illustrate when the agile project management method is most appropriate to use (projects with fluid business requirements).

PMI (2012). Command and control. PM Network, 26(5), 24.

BI is Everywhere

I spent a few hours in the library today to catch up on my reading (it is air conditioned there whereas my office is not).  After looking through my most copies of KM World, Computerworld, Campus Technology, and PM Network I found articles dedicated various Business Intelligence topics.  These articles discussed the use of BI/Big Data/Business Analytics in identifying potential alumni donors; IBM's upcoming acquisition of the search and discovery vendor Vivisimo; investors interest in big data vendors; the up-and-coming job of the data scientist; successes in BI practices; using BI to solve problems with at-risk students, crime, and healthcare; and the use of big data to search for black holes.

With all of the attention on BI it seems as though this may be a trendy topic.  While I believe the terms we use to describe these technologies and practices will change over time, there is too much value in this data and corresponding knowledge building to consider this to be simply a trend.  Big Data/BI/Business Analytics and whatever term will be used next is for real.

Of course I have an interest in this subject since I will be teaching a Business Intelligence course this fall.  It will be a new course in our undergraduate curriculum and it certainly seems to be very timely and valuable course.  I imagine this course will evolve over the next few years but it is one that should produce students with very marketable skills.  Judging from the coverage in the most recent publications, it is a very timely subject.

Digital Possessions

I read an interesting article on the increasing role digital products have in our lives.  The article discussed our migration from physical products (CD, DVDs, photographs, books, etc) to the digital equivalents and how we as a society deal with the changes from physical to virtual.

Personally, I welcome many of the changes as a means to reduce the burden of the physical space required by the 200+ CDs, collection of DVDs, and bookcases full of books and photo albums.  At the same time, however, I would hate to completely loose these physical objects too.  Perhaps younger generations growing up with these digital possessions will have an easier time relinquishing physical objects.

Converting Video Files

Over the past week or two I have posted about the different web application I use.  Today I wanted to post about another great web application.  Zamzar is a great web service that allows you to upload a file, determine the format you wish to convert the file to, and have the newly converted file emailed to you.  The service converts image, document, music, video, ebook, and other files.

This service is great when working on projects involving video or audio files where you need the sources in a certain format.  Although I don't use this service often, when I do use it I'm amazed at how well it works and how much the service helped me in my project.  File conversions that would often require additional software to perform the conversion can be carried out through the Zamzar service without downloading or installing software.  One more great thing; there is no need to establish an account to use this service.

Great Brainstorming Tool

This weekend I was reintroduced to a great brainstorming tool.  Over the past few months I have been using Microsoft Visio to as a brainstorming (mind-mapping) tool for a research project and the new project management Master's degree I have been developing.  Visio works great but requires the software to be installed on the device.  This weekend I was helping my wife with a project and we needed a diagramming tool.  I first thought about using Diagramly, the diagramming tool I blogged about several weeks ago, but then I remembered another great free web-based tool for diagramming...Bubbl.us.

Bubbl.us is a brainstorming tool that allows the user to connect a series of boxes (or bubbles) as part of a mind-mapping diagram.  What is great about this tool is the ease in exporting the diagram to an image file and embedding it into a Word document.  Also, since it is a web-based application, it is OS-independent and I can access my saved diagrams from any computer.

We were pleased with the results and she now has access to this diagram for future use from her own Bubbl.us account.

New Instagram User

I know I'm late on discovering this great app but I'm still excited to begin using it.  Earlier this week I downloaded the Instagram app for my iPhone.  I began playing with the app and applying filters to my existing images on the phone.  I am pretty impressed with the functionality in this simple app.

Using Instagram I'm able to take pictures from my iPhone, enhance them, and send them to my Flickr account. This app also has links into other social medias sites but, right now, I'm just using my Flickr account.  I think this will really change how I use Flickr now that I have an easy way to upload pictures.  In the past I needed to connect my digital SLR to my computer, download the pictures, and then upload the pictures to Flickr.  With Instagram I'm now able to simply upload the pictures right from Instagram.

Unfortunately, if Facebook's acquisition of Instagram takes goes through, the future of the product and its integration with other services may be altered.  I'm pretty sure if this occurs Instagram will never integrate with Google+.

Virtual Desktop Environment

Today our department met with the IT department to discuss the software needed for our Fall semester classes.  Every spring we go through the software currently installed on the lab computers and determine if the software needs to be updated, removed, replaced, or left as is.  This year our meeting included a new dimension; the virtual desktops.

During the Spring semester our IT department rolled-out a new virtual desktop environment for us.  I plan to take advantage of this new environment in an online version of the Database Modeling course I'm developing this summer.  In the past, the online section of this course relied on using Microsoft Access rather than the SQL Server software we use in the on-site section.  Due to implementation challenges our students faced when trying to install SQL Server Express on Vista or Windows 7, and the incompatibilities of SQL Server Express with Apple OS, we were not able to use SQL Server Express in online sections and had to rely on Microsoft Access.

This fall however, we will have our students use a remote desktop session to connect to a virtual server where they can use the Microsoft Management Studio Express software to connect to their SQL Server database instance.  It sounds more difficult than it actually is to connect to the database.  This new environment will allow our online students to have the same tools and experiences as our on-site students.

Managing Information Overload

Now that the semester is over, I'm trying to catch up on the reading I pushed to the side while grading and preparing for all of the end of the year activities.  I have a stack of journals and magazines, a bagillion items in my RSS reader, and a few books I want to peruse.  With all of the changes in the information technology field I am obligated to stay current and this requires a lot of reading.

I am trying to develop a strategy to manage the information I review so that I can read what is important to me, be aware of industry trends outside of my direct interests, and have the ability to recall or re-find the information I come across.  This is a familiar struggle and one that I continue to try to overcome.

I am beginning this endeavor by first defining my immediate areas of interest and limiting the articles/feeds/books to this area.  Topics outside of my area of research and interests will be simply visually scanned so that I can be aware of the current trends and issues.  In order to increase my ability to recall or rediscover the information I gain from my readings I will continue to take notes or capture articles in my Evernote account to make sure I have the ability to search and find these articles or notes in the future.

The amount of information available to us is both overwhelming and exciting.  We just need to develop a strategy to filter this information so we can both narrow our expertise and broaden our awareness.

Big Data for Education

In this month's KMWorld Raths wrote an article about using learning analytics to predict at-risk students in higher education.  Using products like Signals institutions are able to evaluate student demographics and performance to identify those students that are struggle academically.

This form of analytics is more common in the business world but, as seen in this article, the academic world is beginning to see the potential of analytics and big data.  I can image this will greatly improve recruitment efforts but it is also great to see institutions use this new tool set to help students succeed.

New Master's Program

During this past year I have been working on a proposal for a new graduate program at the college.  I developed a proposal, worked with our marketing department on a market analysis study, and presented the completed proposal through the various committees and departments for approval.  This past Friday (May 11th) the college's Board of Trustees made the final approval for this new graduate program.  The program is not officially approved.

Beginning Summer semester 2013, our college will start offering courses towards a Master's of Science in Project Management.  Similar to the other graduate program I direct, this program will be online and taught by mostly practitioners.  More information to follow.

I'm very excited to begin work on developing the program and offering our first classes next May.

Indiana Jones and the Commonplace Book

This weekend my son and I watched the third Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  This is the first time I saw the movie since I was his age.

The first half of the movie consisted of the good guys and bad guys searching for Dr Henry Jones' (the older Jones) journal.  In this journal, the archaeologist recorded diagrams, maps, notes, clippings, and other pieces of knowledge related to his search for the Holy Grail. This journal is actually what was traditionally referred to as a commonplace book where individuals would compile knowledge in a single location and refer back to the entries for recall and further memorization.

The commonplace book is a fantastic personalized knowledge management practice that is less practiced today in the age of electronic storage and searching.  I wonder how moving away from the commonplace book to more electronic forms has affected our ability to memorize and retain the knowledge we capture.  Both Dr. Jones (Henry and Indiana) appeared to have the ability to recall the knowledge recorded in the book better than I would have been able to.  Maybe it's just Hollywood or maybe there is some truth here.  Maybe there are some advantages to the traditional form of knowledge management.

Summer Projects

We are nearing the end of the traditional academic year.  Next week is finals and then the campus empties for the summer.  While I'm wrapping-up my classes I'm also beginning to think about summer projects.  Since the IT Leadership courses (the graduate program I direct) are offered during the summer semester, I'll be around during the summer.  Without the usual meetings and other events on campus during the summer, it is a good time to take on some extra projects and prepare for the next year.

This summer I'm preparing for a new course in BI that I will be teaching in the fall.  I'm also working on developing an online version of the data modeling course I taught for the past few years.  These two course preparations will take some time but I should also be able to find time to make some improvements to some of my administrative processes as well as starting a new research project.

The Summer semester offers a nice change of pace on campus.  I still have a lot to do but, with the quiet hallways and empty parking lots, I find it to be a very peaceful and productive time.  While I always look forward to the end of the academic year, I also look forward to when the students return to campus.  It is great to have these changes on campus.

Encouraging Dissent

Tonight in class we covered many topics; one of which was the criteria for evaluating IT projects.  In a classroom exercise I had the class look at a list of projects (Project A - Project Z) and determine which projects that should be funded.  The projects included a corresponding calculated return on investment (ROI), priority (relative alignment to the business strategy), and project budget.  I also added a constraint that we must distribute the funding so that 50% of the budget was spent on infrastructure projects, 15% on transactional projects, 20% on strategic project and 15% on informational projects.  As a result, we ended up with four separate portfolios of projects.

During our evaluation, one of the students came up with a project funding decision that was counter to what I had in mind.  After listening to the student's reasoning for this funding decision I explained why my approach was different and the reasoning for my approach.  Between our two explanations our class realized that we needed further information to best determine the proper funding approach and both approaches must be considered in the project selection process.

This student's willingness to dissent and the environment we created in class of permitting respectful dissent provided for a great debate and resulted in a better understanding of the true criteria needed for project evaluations.  It was a very successful lesson for all of us and I was very pleased we were able to have this exchange of ideas.  I'm very eager to maintain this environment in this class and other classes.  Respectful debate is healthy and results in the discovery of new ideas.

Evernote for Course Design

Over the summer I will be preparing two course for the Fall semester.  One course will be a redevelopment of our database modeling class and the other course will be a new business intelligence course.  Both courses will integrate our virtual desktop environment in connecting to a SQL Server database.  I'm really looking forward to using this virtual desktop environment in these two classes.

Yesterday I began thinking about what I need to do to prepare for these two courses.  Since I like to keep my notes electronically I opened up Evernote to create a new note for each of the two courses I am beginning to design.  Using the check-box option in Evernote I was able to create a to-do list for all of the tasks I need to complete as I prepare for the course.  Since I'm using an electronic to-do list I'm able to rearrange the list to indicate the proper order for the tasks.  Later on, within the same note, I'll add a table outlining the objectives, assessments, reading assignments for each week in the semester.  Within the same note I can also include links to the online resources I may want to incorporate into the class.

Using this approach, I'm able to have all of my course planning for a given course within one Evernote note and, because of Evernote's syncing approach, I can view and edit my course design and planning from work, home, or my iPad.  If only completing the tasks were as easy as organizing them.

Technology Innvoations

Today I presented with a colleague at the Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health conference.  We presented the topic of technology abuse with a focus on adolescence use of technology (you can find our slides here).

In preparing for this conference I put together a timeline of the different communications-related technologies since the telegraph.  One thing that emerged from this timeline was that, since 1981 when the PC was introduced, communications technology has quickly evolved and many innovations emerged in a a very short period of time.  With such rapid development it is no wonder that we struggle as a society in understanding how to use these forms of communications without having them run our lives.

Looking back at the previous technology innovations I can guess there was some form of adjustment in the integration of the technology into society.  Hopefully, we can also adapt and find better ways to use these new technologies so that we can maintain our ability to connect with people in the absence of technology or, have technology enhance our real connections with each other.

Multitasking and Youth

Last week while preparing for a presentation I'm giving I watched a good PBS Frontline documentary.  This documentary, Digital Nation, was a series of stories focusing on the impacts of technology on our society.  One of the many topics covered was the increase in multitasking.  While the focus was on the adoption of multitasking by youth, the issue applies to adults as well.

In the documentary, researchers discussed findings from recent studies showing the impacts multitasking has on these youths.  The findings showed increased challenges for maintaining focus, slower performance while multitasking, diminished recall, reduced analytic reasoning, and lower reading and writing skills.  While the authors admitted more research is needed, these initial findings are disconcerting.

Need More Practice

Many years ago I enjoyed photography and had time to pursue this hobby.  I owned (and still do own) a 35mm Pentax ME Super and specialized in long exposure night photography.  However, over time any talent I once possessed seems to have disappeared. Earlier this month I took advantage of the nice weather and walked around town with my new digital SLR (Cannon EOS Rebel T1i).

The results from my recent attempt (posted on my Flickr account) at more artistic pictures were not great but it was fun taking up this hobby again.  I think I need to study more to improve my ability to compose the picture and also become more familiar with the functions on my camera so I'm better able to take advantage of the more advanced settings.

I hope I can improve over time.  I'm not the most creative individual but, perhaps, over time and with practice I'll improve.

Big Data and the Curriculum

This weekend I presented with a colleague at the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS) in Cedar Falls, IA.  We presented a discussion on the need for big data to support not only our database courses but other computer science courses and our difficulties in obtaining a good set of data.  Our goal with big data in the curriculum is to collect a set of data that is large (thousands of records) complex (dozens of tables) and meaningful (the students understand the data).

Our computer information systems curriculum needs this large, complex, and meaningful data to support the inquiry based learning approach we wish to employ.  We want our students to be able to explore the data using newly acquired data retrieval and analysis skills and discover meaningful trends in the data.  This approach will increase our students' critical thinking skills and prepare them for the ever-increasing data rich environment they will work in.

I hope to see us apply this inquiry based learning approach with big data in the near future.  It should result in very engaging courses and allow our students to develop relevant and marketable skills.

File Folder Trick

This week I have a lot of meetings.  Most often these meetings include handouts that I received ahead of time to review before the meeting.  With all of these handouts it can be challenging to be sure I review them before the meeting and bring them to the meeting.  Fortunately, a few years ago I adopted the 43 Folders approach.  This organizational approach was made popular by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done.

Using this approach (see a demonstration) I place my meeting handouts in the appropriate daily file folder as I receive them.  Each morning when I get to my office I take out the contents of the days folder, review anything that I need to review to prepare for the meeting, and place the contents in my meeting portfolio.  I also include some of the items I'm working on that day that are noted in my Remember the Milk page.

This is a simple yet effective method for organizing loose items in the office and ensuring that I don't forget my handouts for my meetings.

Recent Popularity of Census Data

On April 2nd, for the first time, the National Archives' US Census data was made available online.  Census data from prior years was released only in the form of microfilm and required a trip to the library to view the films.  Now, we are able to view and search this data from home or any Internet connection.  This convenient level of access has dramatically increased interest in the 3.8 million pages of data and resulted in the National Archive servers becoming overwhelmed with activity on the first day.

I visited the site today and was able to conduct a search without any difficulties.  It is fascinating to see the census data in the original handwritten form.  While I prefer a digital form to support quantitative analysis, this original data in its original form provides a glimpse into tools used to collect the data and an appreciation for the level of effort required to collect this data by hand.

It is exciting to see both the use of the Internet to publish public documents and the resulting increased level of interest in viewing these documents.

Insight Into the Use of Big Data

I came across a New York Times article recently describing how Target is able to apply statistical algorithms on its sales data to identify pregnant consumers based on purchases like unscented lotion.  It turns out that customers often change their buying patterns when they are about to have a baby and having a baby leads to an increase in spending.  Therefore, identifying and enticing women and their husbands during the second trimester of their pregnancy creates opportunities to develop shopping habits and a long-term shopping relationships with these parents.

The article provides a fascinating look at how big data is used to learn intimate details about the customer.  It also demonstrates that organizations are recognizing the need to be discrete when applying data to develop these new insights.  Like in other scientific fields we need to understand that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do something.

I'm excited to see the opportunities big data has for our society and the resulting increased demand for math and computer science professionals.  I only hope that we are able to maintain awareness of the affects this level of analysis has on society and we are able to limit our application of these techniques to be respectful of others.

Free Diagramming Tool

I am teaching an MBA course this semester and next week we are going to discuss the affect information technology has the workflow in an organization.  As part of this discussion, we will begin using process flow diagrams to map current and proposed workflow.  We will use diagramming software to develop these process flow diagrams.  The problem is that Microsoft Visio is not installed on our classroom computer and many students don't have access to this software on their own computers.

I recently came across a great replacement for Microsoft Visio to address situations like this where Visio is not available.  A free web-based tool named Diagramly (http://www.diagram.ly/) supports several forms of diagrams, including process flow diagrams, and can be accessed through a browser and Internet connection.  While the tool is not as polished as Visio, it certainly gets the job done.  This tool will be great to share with the class and will allow them to develop their own models for their final project in the class.

How Big is Too Big?

A colleague recently purchased the new Samsung Galaxy Note phone.  This new phone is quite impressive in the screen size and brightness.  The phone as a 5.3 inch screen and looks like a cross between a mobile phone and a tablet.  A quick preview and I was able to see how much easier it is to use the applications on the phone than a traditional smartphone and how the increased size increases the usefulness for working on documents and other forms of input (the device even comes with a stylus).

I was instantly intrigued with this device and how it made my iPhone look somewhat inferior.  Then, I imagined myself placing this device next to my head to make a call; this form factor now seemed a little awkward.  The larger screen is great and would really increase the usefulness of the devise.  However the benefits of the larger size also create issues for usability.

If the trend toward larger screens on our mobile devices continues, perhaps headsets will become more common so we can maintain the advantage of the larger screen real estate while overcoming the awkwardness in using it as a phone.

Timeliness in Feedback

Faculty understand the act of process improvement to teaching methods.  Each time we teach a class we experiment with new activities, assessments, or lectures in a hope to improve the outcomes,  In this process improvement approach new ideas are implemented, these new ideas are evaluated to determine the relative success of the ideas, and modifications are made to these ideas to be implemented during the next iteration of the course or lecture.  Through this process improvement, we learn from our mistakes and our successes.

We need to keep this process improvement approach in mind with our students as well.  Our students are often challenged to apply new concepts in our course assessments.  However, too often I see faculty simply associate a score with the assessment.  If the students are not provided with sufficient feedback on their performance on the assessment, how then are they to make improvements?  This need for feedback to make improvements is especially important where we require the students to build upon skills throughout the semester.

As faculty, we need to provide feedback aimed at both celebrating their successes with the assessment as well as feedback aimed at helping them understand where they need to improve.  Additionally, this feedback provides another avenue for us to teach.  We can use the assessments as a means to not only evaluate the student's mastery of the topics but also to help them identify improvements to their understanding and application of the material.

This feedback is essential to the process improvement we want to see in our students.  However, the timing of the feedback is just as important as the feedback itself.  We need to provide feedback while the material is fresh in the minds of the students and, this is especially important, before they are asked to use these skills or knowledge in the next assessment.  Our students need to receive our feedback and reflect on the feedback in order to improve during the next iteration of the assessment.  Our timeliness must be considered an important factor in helping our students improve their performance.

Officially A Paperless Office

Over the past year or so I began migrating away from storing paper copies of documents.  Almost everything I come across or use in my work is in electronic form.  I used a large four drawer file cabinet to store a small set of physical documents.  However, I found that I almost never used the paper in the file cabinet.  So, this past fall I recycled most of the papers and moved a very small amount of papers to my desk drawer.  Since then, my file cabinet has been empty.

Recently I submitted a maintenance request to have my file cabinet removed and this morning someone from our facilities group stopped in and hauled away the cabinet.  I now have more space in my office and the office appears to be brighter.  Somehow the removal of the cabinet makes my migration to a paperless office seem official.

Innovation and Our Future

It was an exciting day today.  In addition to the first night of class for an MBA course I'm teaching, I served as a judge at the Minnesota Academy of Science's 2012 Science and Engineering Fair.  Earlier this year I purchased a Lego Mindstorm robot as an award for the science fair.  This award was the Creative Computing award going to the high school student with a science fair project exhibiting the most creative use of computers.

This year I viewed many amazing projects and found it difficult to pick just one.  In the end however, I did pick a winner.  The winning project was a fantastic application of information technology to another scientific field.  The technology itself was not innovative but the integration of a set of technologies to solve a real problem was wonderful.

It was fantastic to see an example of innovation through integration and application.  In this project, the student scientist solved a real-world problem with existing information technologies.  I can't wait until next year to see more examples of these young people driving innovation.  Given the number of sophisticated and practical projects I saw today, I can say that our future is very promising.

Reuse in Academia

This week our students are on spring break.  There are no classes on campus and the halls are empty.  It is a great time to get caught up on reading and writing.

This week I'm writing a paper to present at the 2012 Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium.  I will be presenting with a colleague on the need for big data to support the computer science curriculum.  Our paper is based upon the work we carried out last year in attempt to secure partnerships with industry and a grant funding organization.  As I prepare this paper I'm finding significant value in reusing much of the research conducted last year that went into writing the grant application.  This is a great example of reuse in academic research.

Through this reuse, I'm able to provide insight into our experiences in the partnering and grant processes and place these experience in the context of the current literature.  This research proved valuable in the grant application and will provide value in the conference paper as well.

I would like to encourage reuse of research to my students but when I do so I must also stress the issue of plagiarism.  There is a line between reusing literature research conducted on prior projects and plagiarism.  I want to make sure my students are aware of this line and develop original ideas from prior research.

Scholarly Project Manager

This week I hosted a project management workshop at our Rochester campus.  Dr. Rao Nemani was the guest speaker with his presentation titled Making Your IT Project a Success.

One of the points Dr. Nemani made in his presentation was the need for project managers to become better read in the scholarly journals.  There is a lot of evidence of what works and what doesn't work in the project management field but the findings from these journals are just not making it to the practitioners.  Project managers need to become more aware of the project management research.

In his presentation, Dr. Nemani consistently referenced scholarly works to support his assertions of techniques aimed at improving IT projects and addressing issues common to these projects.  This presentation was a good example of how the academic world and the practitioner world can world well together to address the issues in the field.

Kindle and Guilt

I have been using my Kindle for a few weeks now.  I enjoy how quickly I can purchase new books and the ability to have all of my new books with me.  The reading experience is very good and the device is light and follows a good form factor for reading one handed.

While I'm frustrated by the slow migration of older books to the Kindle, my most significant issue lies in the guilt I have about being one of those people.  Being one of those people means that although I'm reducing the demand for paper and the need for killing trees (a replenishable resource) I'm slowly killing off physical books stores and responsible for the consolidation of booksellers.  If everyone adopted the e-reader we would only have Apple, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble (.com) as the source for books.

What we need is an open standard for these e-books so that any store can sell books online and an e-reader would be compatible with all e-books regardless of where it was purchased.  Perhaps this is too idealistic since the manufacturers of these e-reader devices are building into the cost of the device the assumption that the customer will purchase content and, therefore, is able to offer the device at a discounted price.  If we did have more of an open standard for the e-book the e-reader manufacturers would need to realize profit only from the sale of the device and, as a result, the device prices would increase from the current price.

The bookseller industry is certainly in transition right now.  I would hate to loose the variety of location options to purchase books but I would also hate to give up the convenience of my Kindle.  We will have to see where the future brings us.  One thing is for certain; the future of this industry will look different than it does today.

Big Data

I am teaching a new course this fall titled Applications of Business Intelligence and am really excited about exploring this field as I prepare for the class.  Today I attended a webinar hosted by KMWorld on big data.  The presentation was facilitated by Andy Moore (publisher at KMWorld) and featured Mark Meyers (Vivisimo), Rik Tamm-Daniels (Attivo), and Kathy Lange (SAS Business Analytics Practice).

I find this field of IT particularly interesting with my research focus in knowledge management and database management.  The field of business intelligence/business analytics/data analysis all complement the knowledge management field rather nicely.  As I am just beginning to dig into this domain area, I find the language rather frustrating.  Perhaps there is true delineation between business intelligence, business analytics, data analysis, and data warehousing but they all seem to belong within the same domain area (albeit different aspects of this domain area).

The webinar presentation provided some good insight into the current state of the industry.  Organizations are certainly applying these concepts; particularly larger organizations.  However, there seems to be little evidence of mastery over this new technological and logistical challenge.  This should prove to be a developing field and will result in an exciting journey as I prepare for my new course.

Reviewing Textbooks

This Fall semester I am going to teach a new undergraduate course in Business Intelligence.  In preparation for this new course I'm currently evaluating potential textbooks.  There are many books published for this topic but not all texts follow the same approach, scope, or level of detail I want to use to teach the course.  As a result, I need to look through several different options before I will be able to select the text(s) I want to use for the course.

In previous years this evaluation process required me to request an evaluation copy of each text from each of the publishers.  The publishers would then pay to ship the book out to me.  I would then wait until the textbook arrived before I could evaluate if it would be a good fit for my course.  Approximately 80% of the time I found the textbook did not align with what I was looking for and this resulted in wasted time for me and added effort and expense for the publisher.

This year, I am using CourseSmart.  This new service works with many publishers to offer electronic copies of the textbooks.  I'm able to almost immediately access the textbooks I want to consider.  I'm able to page through the e-book to see if the textbook will meet my needs.  This new service is saving me a considerable amount of time and it also saves the publishers the hassle and expense of sending out textbooks that may not be adopted.

I am now able to narrow down my textbook options to a select few options and then request evaluation copies of these books.  I still feel the need to hold the book to get a better understanding of the content but perhaps, once I feel more comfortable reading from my computer or iPad screen I will be able to complete the entire evaluation through CourseSmart.  Until then, I'm very happy with this way of conducting the initial search.

PIM Methods

Last week I participated as a guest in a Knowledge Management course.  During my week in the course the class was studying personal knowledge management and our discussions were focused on this topic.  Participating in this discussion allowed me to reflect on my past approaches to personal knowledge management; especially as our discussions inevitably lead to personal information management.

Since I have always been a stickler for organization, I soon embraced personal information strategies as I entered the workforce.  Perhaps this started with my TrapperKeeper in grade school.  Once in the workplace I began using software like Sidekick but adopted the Franklin Planner after attending a professional time management seminar on the Covey method.  After sticking with the Franklin Planner for many years I moved back into technology once the Palm was released where I used the Palm III (and later the Palm V) with my Outlook software.  From there I tried the PocketPC, Lotus Organizer, Ecco Pro, and the BlueSky planning calendar.  Now I find myself armed with a iPhone with access to my email, calendar, contacts, and Remember the Milk task list.

My PIM tools over the years have changed and so has my approach to my personal information management.  After years of following the Covey planning method of my Franklin Planner, I read Getting Things Done and discovered a more dynamic way to task management.  I also found that Remember the Milk as a closer match to this GTD method than Covey's planning system method.

One thing we learned this week in the Knowledge Management course is that personal knowledge management and personal information management are exactly that; personal.  Each individual has their own working style and this style may also be influenced by the position and the organizational culture.  Tools that work for me may not work for others.  Experimenting and discovery is the key to finding a successful PIM or PKM method.

Assessment Levels

I came across an article yesterday discussing multiple levels of curricular assessment.  While curricular assessment may not be the most exciting topic to read, this article did introduce me to a new perspective on applying assessments to my graduate curriculum.  Additionally, given our college is up for review by our regional accrediting agency this fall, this is a timely topic for me.

In this article the author applied the Kirkpatrick framework of training program assessment to curriculum assessment in higher education.  Using this approach, there are four levels of assessment:

1. Level 1 - Reaction: Measuring the level of satisfaction with a course or program
2. Level 2 - Learning: Measuring the change in the student's attitudes, knowledge or skills
3. Level 3 - Behavior: Measuring modifications to the performance behaviors of the student
4. Level 4 - Results: Measuring the performance increases due to application of the skills acquired in the class or academic program

Most program assessment plans do not address all four levels of assessment and perhaps apply Level 1 and Level 2 assessments.  This results in assessments that do not evaluate all dimensions of the outcomes.  The author acknowledge the increased level of effort required for the higher level assessments.  Perhaps this is why not all levels are commonly assessed.

Adopting Google+

A couple of years ago, my college adopted the Google suite of applications and email to replace our legacy email system.  As part of this adoption our system administrator is able to grant us access to many of the Google products.  Last month, we gained access to Google+.

Some time last year, before the college rolled-out Google+, I created my own personal Google+ account to see what all of the fuss was about.  After setting up my account I didn't really see how I could justify spending time within this new social application.  Now that I have access to Google+ through the college I thought I would create an account and, perhaps, a new use for this service would emerge.

After a couple of weeks with the new Google+ account, I added several friends, family, and colleagues to my circles and followed (is that the right term?; it seems like I'm a stalker) a few prominent IT personalities to view their streams.  Since setting this up I posted a message, +1 a few postings, and noticed myself begin added to the circles of other people.  However, nothing earth shattering has occurred yet.  I don't know what I'm expecting but I hope there will be more to Google+ than this.

I'm hopeful Google+ will serve as a way to stay connected to my colleagues, alumni, and friends.  I like the idea of circles since the separation of my professional life and academic life was one of the reasons I stayed away from Facebook.  I hope Google+ offers more interaction and relevance than offered by LinkedIn but I'm not sure where this will go.  I think the adoption rate and participation rate of Google+ will be the strongest indicators of how much benefit this will serve.

Learning Journal

Over the summer semester I teach a research and writing class for graduate students preparing for their final thesis.  In this course the students are reintroduced to scholarly writing, research, and the APA formatting guidelines.  The final deliverable for this course is a project proposal for their thesis.

About halfway through the course the students spend about four weeks researching their topics and writing an annotated bibliography of their sources.  This exercise is assigned to help the students place their research in the context of their thesis project and to encourage them to conduct a majority of their literature research in the preparation of their proposal.

Over the past few years I noticed many students were putting off the research until the end of the four weeks.  This resulted in a hastily constructed collection of unrelated sources that were intended to satisfy the need for the bibliography assignment more than the development of their research proposal.  This year I wanted to incentivize the students to begin the research earlier in the class and to report their progress during the four-week window of research.

I am looking to ask the students to contribute to their own learning journal throughout the class where the students are each required to reflect on their findings from the literature and their progress toward the project proposal.  My hope is this journal will make their progress more transparent to the student and myself and to keep the students focused on the development of the proposal.  Hopefully, I can implement this journal assignment in a manner that provides value to the student while allowing me to better understand their progress, concerns, and new discoveries.

Evernote and the Paperless Home Office

For many years I have been saving the user manuals that come with many of the products I purchase.  I have a file cabinet in the basement containing all of these manuals but these manuals are taking up some space.  Holding on to these manuals has been useful (how much oil does my lawn mower engine need?) but I don't refer to them frequently.  I decided that I no longer want to house this collection of paper in my basement.  So rather than throwing these out, I decided to move the manuals to my Evernote account.

I am able to add a PDF as a separate Evernote note for each manual.  The good news is that many of these manuals are published as a PDF on the manufacturer's website.  A simple Google search for "X user manual" (where X is the product I'm looking fore) allows me to quickly find the URL of the product manual.  I am slowing adding these manuals to my Evernnote account and recycling the paper copies once I add the PDF copy.

I found another benefit to moving these manuals to Evernote.  Not only do I save physical space in my basement, I am also able to view these manuals anywhere.  Since Evernote syncs with my iPad and iPhone I can search for these manuals on my devices as well as my computer.

I'm going to keep looking for ways to free up space by moving my paper copies to Evernote.

iPad for Magazines

Last month, several of the IT magazines ceased publishing paper copies of their publications and moved to digital only copies.  I now have the ability to read these publications and others on my iPad and have been doing so for a few months now.  There are both positive and negative factors in this reading experience.

First, the positive.  The most obvious benefit is the ability to carry around all of my magazines with me on the iPad I already have in my bag.  This also enables me to hold onto older issues without additional physical weight or space (until I run out of storage space on my iPad).  I also like the option some of the publishers provide where I can select a a magazine view or a text view of each article.  However, one of the biggest benefits is the ability to search the content either within an issue or across issues.

Next, the negative.  I still miss the feel of paper but not the physical space it takes up.  I am also limited in my ability to simply give the magazine to a student or colleague when I'm finished with it.  The biggest drawback I have experienced so far is the lack of visibility of the magazine in my workflow.  In the old days (last year) I would have a stack of publications I'm reading through and when I get a new publication I add it to the pile.  Now with the digital only versions, they are not visible in my pile and I have to remember to go to my iPad and find the magazine.

There are both benefits and challenges to this new delivery method for the publishers.  I don't have any real complaints but this is something that may take awhile to get used to.  Will it continue or is the "magazine" concept becoming old fashioned?

New Turnitin Functions

I just came back from a demonstration of the new GradeMark and PeerMark functions of Turnitin (at least these are new to me since our college just purchased these two additional functions for Turnitin).  In case you are not familiar with Turnitin, it is a originality verification service where students or the professor uploads the paper and the service identifies matches against other papers and published works.  It is useful for detecting plagiarism but it also serves as a great learning tool for students to evaluate their ability to paraphrase sources when writing research papers.

The two new functions increase the level of interaction we have with the student papers.  GradeMark evaluates the paper for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and  composition.  Also, GradeMark allows the professor to insert standard remarks, customized remarks, or comments directly into the paper.  The PeerMark function enables peer review of the assignments for a class.  Both functions are good additions to Turnitin and I'll probably consider adopting GradeMark when evaluating papers submitted through Turnitin.

The issue I see with the the Turnitin software is the lack of integration into Blackboard or other learning management systems.  I have my students submit their work in Blackboard, I grade their assignments in Blackboard, and I leave my assignment feedback in Blackboard.  Right now, I need to ask the students to submit their work in both places so that I can use Turnitin while maintaining the assignments in Blackboard.  I still am impressed with Turnitin I just see room for improvement.

Customer Service Win

Earlier this week I vented about my experience with poor customer service from a publisher's account representative.  As it turns out, I also had another experience with a different publisher's account representative; this time this experience was very positive.

In my quest for textbooks for a new class I'm teaching this fall (Applications in Business Intelligence) I contacted another account representative for a copy of a textbook that appeared to support the outcomes I'm looking for in this class.  I received an immediate response from the account representative and the representative also suggested two other textbooks that might be a good match for this class.  Yesterday I received the three books and found all three books to offer different but very good coverage of the course topics.  Now I need to further define how I want to teach the course in order to determine which textbook I should use.

My point here is that this time the account representative was in tuned to the purpose of my request rather than responding to an inquiry.  The representative offered excellent customer service by immediately responding to my request and also offering new suggestions of their publications that may meet my course needs.  This is a customer service win.

2012 Special Award

Over the past several years I have volunteered to serve as a judge at the Minnesota State Science & Engineering Fair.  More recently, my college has sponsored a Special Award at this event and I have served as the judge for this award.  As in prior years, this year we are sponsoring the Creative Computing award given to the senior high student who's project is selected as representing the most creative use of computer technology.  Also, as in prior years, this year's award will be a Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0.

I'm looking forward to meeting the students at this year's science fair and reviewing their projects.  I'm always impressed by the level of effort put into these projects and the depth of knowledge possessed by these highly motivated students.

Customer Service Fail

I'm going to use this space today to vent about a poor experience I had with an account representative from one of the textbook publishers.

Due to larger than expected enrollment this spring semester, one of the courses in my IT Leadership program requires a new section to be opened to support the number of students wishing to take the course this spring.  I found a great instructor to teach the course and was in the process of contacting the publisher to obtain copies of the textbook we used for this course.  This is where the frustration begins.

I searched the textbook publisher's website looking for the text by title, then author, and finally ISBN.  No luck.  Then, I used the account representative contact information to contact a representative to inquire about the textbook.  The response I received from the account representative simply stated the ISBN did not exist in their database so either they are not the publisher or the book was no longer in print.  Since I have my own copy of the book I know they are the publisher and the ISBN is correct so I came to the conclusion the book is no longer in print.

Here is the frustration.  First of all, the account representative was not able to tell me the book was not in print.  Secondly, the representative failed to suggest an alternative text since obviously I would need a new text option in the future.  I am aghast at this lack of customer service offered by the representative.  Due to the difficulty of the lack of information on the website and obtaining useful service from the account representative I am going to try to avoid working with this publisher in the future; if I can find alternative texts with other publishers I will choose another publisher.

Are we so reliant on our technology and self-service that we miss out on the true value people add?  This publisher relied heavily on the website and failed offer knowledgeable support for their products.  This is both a systems failure as well as a human resources failure.  I'm sure everyone can all relate to similar customer service experiences.

Explicit and Tacit Assessments

Educators use various forms of assessment to evaluate a student's performance in a class.  These assessments are intended to determine the level of mastery a students has achieved in the given subject matter.  However, a student learns at several different levels and these levels of understanding or learning are defined by Bloom.

Many educators agree that assessment must not target only one level of learning but must consider multiple levels.  Common testing methods of assessment where students answer questions to evaluate their memorization and comprehension of material simply evaluates lower level learning.  Mitri noted this level of objective evaluation is easy to automate but only evaluates the students explicit knowledge of the subject matter.  The author argued higher levels of learning can only be evaluated through evaluation of tacit knowledge.

The challenge is to develop assessments to properly evaluate higher levels of learning.  A student's expression of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the material requires the student to formulate explicit knowledge from the tacit knowledge developed as a result of the course.  Additionally, the grading of these assessments requires the faculty member to apply tacit knowledge in evaluating the student's responses.  Faculty members must be able to apply their tacit knowledge of evaluation of the assessments to their evaluations.

While Mitri was not attempting to describe grading rubrics, in essence, this argument provides the knowledge management perspective on the real purpose of grading rubrics.  The grading rubric represents the professor's conversion of the tacit assessment criteria into an explicit form.  This is true knowledge management at work!

What I did New Year's Eve

A few years ago I picked up my drums again (stopped playing after my freshman year in college) and began playing with a local band.  We play big band music in the nursing homes around the area and have a few "gigs" at the city parks in the summer.  Recently, a local paper covered one of the New Year's concerts we performed.

Playing at these concerts is a big effort for a drummer.  I store my drums in the basement of my house and must load, unload, setup, take down, load, and unload the drums for each concert.  A one hour concert typically requires another 90 minutes of work to prepare and take down.  However, as I mentioned in the article, this effort is worth it when I see how much the audience loves the music we play and how it brings back memories of their youth.  My wife always reminds me of this when I'm complaining about lugging the drums around.  She's right, it is important to take into consideration the impact our efforts have on the lives of other people.

I need to keep this in mind as I prepare to teach and advise my students.

BI Overview

This fall I will be developing and teaching a new course offered as part of our undergraduate Computer Information Systems program.  This course, Applications of Business Intelligence, is a part of our new marketing analytics concentration and will include both Marketing and Computer Information Systems students.

As I continue to get caught up on my reading over the semester break I came across a great article providing both a simple and more in-depth introduction to business intelligence (BI) technologies.  I think that, while article may be too detailed to assign to the students as part of the course, it certainly helps me prepare for the course so I can better conceptualize the BI tools and technical environment for my students.

Coming across this article reminded me of one of the great things about teaching a new class; the joy of learning new things.  I look forward to learning more about BI as I prepare for the class and hope I'm able to instill this excitement for learning this subject in my students this fall.

Cut the Line

Over the semester break my wife and I decided to disconnect our home phone.  We looked at how infrequently we used our land line and how infrequently we received calls on this phone and determined we no longer needed to have this additional phone line.  My wife and I and our teenagers all have mobile phones where we receive most of our calls so we felt we were not going to loose much by disconnecting our home phone.

It has been a couple of weeks since we disconnected our home telephone and the transition has been pretty smooth.  I still find myself looking at the table where our answering machine used to be when I enter the house but, otherwise, I haven't missed the home telephone.  I will probably miss it even less next month when I don't receive a bill from the local phone company.

Academic Blogging

While posting to my blog over the past nine months I found the process to be an excellent method to think about what I read and the way I run my classes.  After I read an article I reflect on what I learned and how it applies to my prior knowledge and experiences.  This process is valuable for enhancing what I remember and to build upon what I know.

I came across a great article today expressing this same concept for the use of blogs in the classroom.  I really liked the idea of the free-range blogging where students reflect on the course material and are graded on participation.  In this type of blogging students are evaluated on their quality of reflection and comments to other students blogs rather than right or wrong answers posted in the blog.

Academic blogging could help my students better apply the material and enable students to learn from each other as they read and comment on each others blogs.  I think I will try this out with my graduate students this spring and, if it works well, try it out in an undergraduate class in the fall.  I'm optimistic that this will really help students become more engaged with the course material.

Tagging and Subject Headings

I just returned from our faculty lounge on campus where I was in a discussion with one of our librarians and a management faculty.  Over the past few months I have been trying to convince my colleague in the management department to consider tagging his content rather than using directory structures.  I was trying to explain the tagging concept comparing it to the subject search function in the library catalog for associating content with subject areas using keywords.

Our librarian interjected to point out the issue of inconsistencies in the tagging approach as opposed to the standardized subject categories used by the library.  Tagging results in inconsistent tags applied to the same subject whereas the subject categories are centrally applied an therefore consistent across information sources.  We all agreed the subject categories certainly provide more value for their consistency but, as I argued, we cannot centrally categorize all content due to the large volumes of content now generated on the internet.

We must understand tagging is not precise but is intended to support searching of large quantities of content.  Searching using user-defined tags will result in imprecise results as opposed to subject searches.  It is not practical to apply official subject headings on our content so we are left with user-defined tagging.  Commonality in tags across content authors will emerge and become a type of standard where searching for a particular tag yields significant results.  However, these results will not represent the entire set of content related to the subject since some content authors did not apply the same tag; the search results are not complete and some content will not be found.

While limitations exist in the tagging approach, content authors applying a formalized taxonomy to the content is not yet practical.  We will have to continue to wait for Web 3.0 (the semantic web).

Communication is the Key

After reading Computerworld's special report on IT jobs, it is clear communication is an important factor in the marketability of the IT professional.  We can no longer expect to work independently and rely on a static set of skills.  The profession now requires improved teamwork and increased awareness of the functional areas of the organization.  We must be able to communicate within the IT ranks as well as with individuals outside of IT.

In addition to communications, IT professionals must continually develop new and relevant skills.  Although the need for continued acquisition of new skills is not new we now need to be proficient in a larger set of skills.  We can no longer possess a specialization in a single area.  A key attribute for the IT professional will be the ability and desire to quickly and continually learn new technologies.  Also, we must understand the business context in order to truly understand how these technologies are applied within the organization.