The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2004: §3422
|Sat, Nov 6, 3:00 - 3:25, Vanderbilt Room Paper (refereed)
|Recommended Citation: Orwig, R. A Method of Measuring Fitness of Learning Tasks to Blackboard Technology. In The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2004, v 21 (Newport): §3422. ISSN: 1542-7382.
A Method of Measuring Fitness of Learning Tasks to Blackboard Technology
Research in Information Systems task/technology fitness has largely assumed that the business task is well-defined. This research demonstrates that even a simple task such as "Complete an IT Project Management Course" can be defined with great ambiguity among students. Thirty-three students were assigned to identify and define activities associated with completing a semester course. Their resulting models were merged to comprise a super-list of sixty-nine unique activities. Cumulatively, this defines the tasks associated with learning the material of the course. The functions of Blackboard Version 5, a technological learning environment, were identified and mapped into each task. The resulting many-to-many mapping demonstrates the complexity of attempting to determine the degree of fitness of a technology such as a Blackboard learning environment to a "simple" task as completing an IT Project Management course. We refer to the gap between the task definition and the system functionality as the "gulf of ambiguity." Further research is needed to better come to consensus upon the task definition and identify a value measure to each mapping between the tasks and functions.
|Richard Orwig [a1] [a2]|
Sigmund Weis School of Business
Susquehanna University [u1] [u2]
Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, USA [c1] [c2]
Keywords: task-technology fitness, activity modeling, requirements engineering, computer learning environment
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