A Presentation on Business Intelligence Education

This is a presentation delivered during a campus visit in which I briefly discussed business intelligence education in Metro Atlanta.
View it on Office Live: Business Intelligence Education
Download: Business Intelligence Education

Questions discussed:
What is BI?
What is the job prospects of BI?
Why should higher education care about BI?
What are the ways to offer BI education?
How’s BI education in Metro Atlanta?

Learning and Problem Solving Attitude

I usually ask some behavior questions on learning to my students, and hope to encourage them to get most from any learning experience. The following two are the most often asked questions.

1. What is your action or attitude toward problems?

2. What’s your attitude and action when you “feel” the study material is too simple for you (assuming that the subject was your interest)?

Systems to Support Virtual Office Hours

It is common now for instructors to hold virtual office hours, when students can communicate with instructors without physically coming to the office. However, sometimes phone and emails are not that effective to deal certain issues. Here I want to discuss some applications and technologies to hold virtual office hours.

Let me start with a summary of some office hour activities:

• Simple communications. This is a basic form of out-of-classroom contact between students and instructors. It is usually on simple issues with limited rounds of questions and answers, and can be quickly resolved just by talking.
• Discussion. This is when students want to discuss more complex topics with the instructor, like presentations, research topic, study guidance, etc. These activities are not limited to verbal communications, but also include activities like paper dicussion, collaborative browsing, sharing of resources, working on computer files, etc.
• Teaching (see Learning and Teaching During Office Hours). Sometimes students will come to ask for help on certain course content subjects, in which verbal explanation is often not very effective. The session may involve writing, drawing, demonstration (especially on technology subjects), and other hands-on operations.

Here are some common applications and systems to support these virtual office hour activities:

1. Asynchronous communication applications such as emails and discussion boards.
2. Online synchronous communication tools. There are several choices to consider:
   • Many course management systems (BlackBoard, WebCT, Moodle) have built-in messaging tools.
   • Using general instant messaging tools, such as Live Messenger.
   • Popular social network sites (such as FaceBook, where most students already have accounts) usually provide integrated chatting applications.
   • Setting up a chat room, where multiple people can join and chat. Here is an interesting one called Party Chat.
3. Advanced collaboration applications. These applications not only support communications, but also provide some advanced features like application sharing, desktop sharing, collaborative viewing and editing, white board, etc. These are good for more complex office hour activities. Some examples:
   • Skype has a desktop sharing feature, in addition to video chatting.
   • Groove has many application sharing tools.
   • Google Docs (especially Spreadsheet) and Google Wave provides synchronous collaborative editing and resource sharing features.

I think a desired virtual office hour application is basically some specialization of an online collaboration system. It is best to be part of a learning or course management system, with the following features (but not limited to) to support major types of office hour activities stated earlier:

• support synchronous and asynchronous communications;
• support text, voice, and video communications;
• support file/document sharing, desktop sharing, application sharing, and other collaborative actions;
• support one-to-one and one-to-many sessions;
• support recording and broadcasting of general issue discussions.

Do you hold virtual office hours? Do you know or use any other good applications? Please share your experience.

Some other good readings:

• Li, Lei, and Pitts, Jennifer, “Using Virtual Office Hours to Enhance Student-Faculty Interaction,” Journal of Information Systems Education, 20(2), July 1 2009, 175-185
• http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page7902.aspx
• http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=61097.0

Virtual Classroom for Online Classes

Last week, VenueGen demonstrated its beta system for virtual conference at DEMO 2010. It was very impressive and I immediately thought about trying it for my online class. So requested a trial account and installed the system. My object is to test drive the system to see whether it can be used for actual online class sessions.

I listed below some of my experiences and evaluations of the beta system, particularly for online class. I also took a set of Venuegen system screenshots and put them on Flickr.

1. What I have tried successfully:
   • Created an avatar (but my avatar was ugly based on my photo so I did not use my own photo).
   • Uploaded my files (PowerPoint, PDF, images) and display/project them on the big virtual screen.
   • Used virtual browser and visited many websites.
   • Played YouTube videos on the virtual screen.
   • Used the whiteboard for free drawing.
   • Moved around the classroom with various gestures.
2. But I did not find a way to:
   • Share my desktop and demonstrate any local software.
   • Copy and paste content.
   • Use a laser point or highlighter to point to certain regions on the virtual screen.
   • Record the class session.
3. And I did not have a chance to:
   • Interact with students.
   • See if students can use the big virtual screen, and share their work.
   • See if students can work in groups and collaborate.
   • Test the microphone.

My overall impression:

• The idea is excellent, but as a beta version system, there are a lot of bugs, inconsistencies, crashes, and other usability issues.
• The system is not really designed specifically for online classes. I found many classroom features missing, some of which are important to have.
• It is not ready for serious online class use at this time; but I know it got potential.

Prototyping in Design Science Research

Design science research (DESRIST) is a research process based on the activities of design (development). Prototyping method, in which an IT artifact is usually created, can be used as a vehicle for research. But it is different from a normal development work.

In design science research, there are a number of stages involved in the process: awareness of the problem, suggestion, development, evaluation, and conclusion (see http://desrist.org/design-research-in-information-systems/). There are two major activities in the prototyping based development stage: prototyping and knowledge creation (see the figure below).

Design Science Research Development Stage Activities: Prototyping and Knowledge Creation

First, there are a lot of normal system development (prototyping) activities, such as requirement analysis, design, programming, debugging, testing, etc. Second, it is also a knowledge creation process. In this process, conceptual components of the system were identified and defined; the relationships among them were also defined. The prototyping process is the underlying activity to provide raw materials for conceptual thinking and abstraction. Concepts are abstracted from the prototyping. At the same time, new theoretical developments are implemented into the prototyping process. These cycles of abstraction and implementation continue as both the knowledge and prototype are modified and improved. Eventually, the prototype becomes functionally complete and stable, and the theoretical model matures. Periodically, formative evaluations are conducted to confirm the design and demonstrate utility or usability, at same time to get external feedback for continuing research. Then formal evaluation would take place to conclude the project. During the development stage, there are multiple sources that contribute to the development of both processes: prior design experience, existing knowledge (literature), external feedback (exploratory interviews, and some other informal discussions with other people), and creativity (sudden idea pop-up).

The prototyping method used in the development is not different from normal information system development methodologies in practice. What makes the prototyping work different in a research, particularly design science research, is the knowledge creation process. Here, the prototype instantiation is not the only objective of the development. The knowledge, abstracted, representative, and generalized (to a certain degree), is another important objective for research. In this sense, prototyping is used as a vehicle to learn the problem domain, seek and refine the solution, and finally create knowledge. This process usually takes a lot of time and effort. The original design could be significantly changed, incorporating new discoveries and generating new ideas.

[Note: these thoughts (and the diagram) are based on my design research experience in my dissertation work. To cite:
Zheng, Guangzhi, “A Multidimensional and Visual Exploration Approach to Project Portfolio Management,” Ph.D Dissertation, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, 2009.

Tips to make a classroom presentation fun and interesting

It’s very common for students to deliver formal (or semi-formal) presentations on certain topics in the classroom. However, I found many of the presentations are not “interesting” enough to grab other students’ attention. Here are some tips (from my own experience) for making presentations interesting:

• Utilize relevant multimedia (graphics, animations, video clips, sounds, etc.) and discuss them (this is important – having these media but not discussing them sometimes confuses people). They can be funny, but also should be relevant.
• Share personal real life experience, and encourage the audience to share theirs.
• If it is a team presentation, you can present different arguments and ideas from each presenter, or have a debate among presenters.
• Hold in-class polls. Besides asking audience to raise hands, try these polling systems: 3) polling service such as http://www.polleverywhere.com (they can use cell phones to vote!); 2) (if in a computer lab) wordpress.com or blogspot.com poll gadgets, or Google Docs Form.
• Do small exercises or play simple games that involve the audience. Award them with candies.
• Deliver live demonstrations. Note that the demonstration is a way to illustrate your idea; it should serve your presentation, not the other way. Do not let the demo take over your presentation.
• Ask interesting questions to the audience (don’t ask hard (cold) questions). Remember to give feedback to their answers.
• Use good and interesting examples. Don’t just read definitions of terms and concepts. Use live examples if possible.
• Set up dummy statement and let people judge and debate, or intentionally do something incorrect and let the audience judge.

Is there any other practice you follow and find effective? Please share.

Some other resource:

• http://www.rachelgreen.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?tips51
• http://www.ehow.com/how_4925834_make-powerpoint-presentation-interesting.html
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Making-Your-Presentation-Useful-And-Interesting&id=1348033
• http://www.mcbre.org/Library/Interactive_Presentation.pdf

Various Balances in Learning

I am a person often pursuing some kind of balance. In teaching/learning, I think the following balances will benefit learners.

• Studying vs. thinking. Confucius says: studying without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without studying leads to exhaustion.
• Theory vs. practice. Theory and concepts are as important as practices, and vice versa. Thus, exams and projects are of equal importance.
• Memorization vs. understanding. Understanding is the basis of memorization. Memorization can also facilitates understanding and communication. Thus, closed
  book exams are needed.
• Self study vs. group study. Both are important. Self study gives you time and pace to digest knowledge; group study gives you opportunity to communicate and actively exchange information and learning experience with others.

Are there any other balances that are worth mentioning?