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.