Information Systems Department College of Computing Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology CIS677-102/4: Information Systems Principles, Spring 2005 Professor Bieber
A Public Research University

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Extra Credit Participation

I am inviting everyone's input into our course, both for this semester and to improve future semesters.

In particular I'd like suggestions for:

• readings
• case studies
• in-class team activities

for every module of the course, both those coming up as well as those we've done already (for improving future semesters). Please see a list of topics we'll be covering on the course schedule. Please post your suggestions in the "Extra Credit Participation" conference on WebBoard.

(And of course, I'd like to encourage feedback in general on in the appropriate conferences on WebBoard.)

I'm still trying to adapt the recommended format for team activities to the kinds of materials we have in this class. To summarize briefly, the TBL-gurus recommend the "3 S's":

• Same Activity: Teams should work on the same problem or case.
• Specific Choice: Solutions should require students to make a specific choice, preferably requiring a short, to-the-point answer (ideally one word solutions such as "yes/no" or choosing a specific option). A "make a list" activity is not a specific choice. Specific choice tasks focus teams on deciding "why" and requires higher-level cognitive skills, and thus promote better learning.
• Simultaneous Reporting: Teams should report their choices simultaneously.

This ideally would mean breaking more complex activities up into a sequence of short chunks or pieces that have specific choices, which teams can develop and then simultaneously present, before moving on to the next one.

{longer description of creating effective assignments}