Learning Showcase 2014

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  Critical Thinking in the Information Technology Program: A Deciding Factor for Employment

  Todd A. Whittaker and Isidoro Talavera

  “[C]ritical thinking [as analysis and evaluation] is an active skill-building process, not a subject for passive academic study.” Thus, it cannot be mastered through the technical content of a major alone. This suggests that there is a crucial gap between a purely vocationally focused approach to teaching and the higher-cognitive skills (i.e., learning through connecting ideas together) necessary for students “to compete successfully in securing employment or progressing in their chosen field.” Business leaders and educators around the globe realize that critical thinking is in short supply across the board, and managers and employees must be able to think critically for both personal and organizational success. Accordingly, rather than just focusing on teaching any single technical outcome, the Information Technology Major strives to graduate versatile, broadly skilled individuals prepared to tackle a wide range of problems in a rapidly changing world of intensifying complexity. Since many of Franklin’s graduates are completing their degrees in order to advance their careers, it is reasonable to look at correlations between individual criteria and the summative “Employability” outcome of our Capstone Project. A statistical analysis of the data shows that the correlation between critical thinking and employability is significantly the strongest. While select technical skills are important, the largest single contributor to employability is not the technical content of the major, but rather the ability of students to think, reason, and communicate critically about the technical content.

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  Study Abroad: Do Adult Non-traditional Students and Traditional Students Receive the Same Benefits and Have the Same Concerns About Studying Abroad?

  JoAnna Williamson and Jasmine Suarez

  The demand for a global educational experience has increased with the rise in diversity worldwide. Employers are seeking individuals with the hard and soft skills needed in today’s cross-cultural environment. This research explores the similarities and differences in benefits and concerns regarding study abroad programs for traditional and adult non-traditional students. Initial primary and secondary research suggests that traditional and non-traditional students share some similar concerns about studying abroad, but are capable of receiving the same benefits. Educational itineraries and shorter travel times were identified as positive contributors to adult students’ willingness to participate in study abroad programs. Franklin University’s Study Abroad Task Force will use the results of this research to support the recommendation and the roll out of study abroad programs university wide.

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  Using Visual Mind Mapping to Design Academic Courses: Transitioning from Text-Based Planning Documents to Course Design Maps

  Rob L. Wood

  The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” (circa 1921) represents the concept that images can convey complex ideas and information more efficiently, and more effectively, than linear text alone. By contrast, much of the practice of instructional design remains bound to its “textual roots” from the 1940s. Today, most instructional design products, such as planning documents, remain text-based. The author’s instructional design practice remained textually-based for over 20 years, until his research into, and subsequent adoption of, mind mapping, a visual method of organizing complex thoughts and developing ideas. The principles of mind mapping are quite old. Porphyry of Tyros, a noted philosopher of the 3rd century, created what we would today call a mind map illustrating the Aristotle’s categories. Other notable “mind mappers” include Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin (Grubb & Gee, 2013). Beginning in 2012, the author began experimenting with the applications of mind mapping to the instructional design process. The result was a fundamental shift from producing text-based instructional design planning documents to producing visual “course design maps” using a free mind mapping software package. The poster session will explore the practice of mind mapping as it applies to designing academic courses and will include a discussion and a live demonstration.

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  Technology-Enhanced Work Examples: Techniques for Using Mobile Devices to Enhance Learning through Teaching, Collaboration, and Sharing

  Julie A. Wuebker

  Many principles and concepts are best explained and demonstrated through worked examples. Worked examples can take many forms from fill-in-the-blank to fully written-out from scratch. Research shows that students and faculty alike find great value in spontaneous written examples on a whiteboard or chalkboard. This spontaneity allows instructors to quickly adjust to the learners needs. In this showcase, you will see how to use technology to transfer this concept of the classroom-based spontaneous worked example to online and hybrid class environments.

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  An Innovative and Promising New Doctorate Program: DPS in Instructional Design Leadership

  Yi Yang

  The demand for professional practitioner-oriented doctoral education has grown rapidly over the past decade. The Carnegie Foundation (Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Grabedian, 2006) advised that universities should offer professional practice doctorates for education to better serve the needs of professional practitioners. With the long history and strength to provide quality education for busy professionals,

  Franklin University will now offer a new and innovative doctoral program, Doctor of Professional Studies in Instructional Design Leadership. This professional practice doctorate is designed to attract professionals in training, instructional design, and curriculum design to advance themselves for the highest academic degree. This program will prepare exemplary domestic and international leaders in instructional design and training by establishing a student-centered, professionally focused, inquiry driven, theory-to-practice advanced, and globally significant environment that places high value on diverse cultures, experiences, and perspectives. Hence, the goals of the DPS in Instructional Design Leadership program include:

  • Teaching students instructional design leadership within domestic and global organizations
  • Advancing the scholarship of practice
  • Providing a quality, professionally tailored, comprehensive, and practice- oriented curriculum
  • Building a community among students, faculty, alumni and professionals
  • Creating a transformational environment for students to achieve their personal and professional goals
  • Developing strategic alliances with professional, corporate, government, and educational organizations

  This presentation will also share the ten differentiators of this program, outline the program path, and career opportunities for the graduates. It will be of special interest for the audience who are seeking an advanced professional oriented doctoral degree.

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  Choosing Appropriate Technologies to Engage Millennial Students

  Yi Yang and Dennis Priebe

  Millennial students are those who were born between years 1982 - 2003 and thus started to enter college after year 2000. Howe and Stress (2000) contend that millennial students have different attitudes and behaviors than the previous generations, such as baby boomers and Generation X. They are also referred to as Generation Y, Nexters, Digital Natives, and Generation Me. Millennial students are (1) conventionally motivated and respectful; (2) structured rule followers; (3) protected and sheltered; (4) cooperative and team-oriented; (5) confident and optimistic about their futures; (6) talented achievers (Strange, 2004). To meet their learning styles and needs, we need to realign our instructional strategies to engage the millenials and create a more effective and meaningful learning experience for them. In addition, they grew up with technologies and very technology savvy. Therefore, how to choose appropriate technologies to address their learning needs becomes prominent for higher education instructors. This presentation will review the characteristics, learning styles, and learning needs of millennial students, recommend proper technologies, and demonstrate the applications of those technology tools. This presentation will be especially beneficial for the audience who are interested in a deeper understanding of teaching millennial students.

  *Outstanding Faculty Poster Winner

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  Genomic Sequencing Data Analysis Workflow for Bioinformatics Core Facilities

  Selen A. Yilmaz, Jie Zhang, and Gulcin Ozer

  Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is becoming a common tool in the practice of biomedical research and the future of how medicine will be practiced. To keep up with the explosion in new NGS experiments and the growing need in data analysis, we identified bottlenecks of our NGS data analysis workflow, evaluated and tested feasibility of solutions. To address main bottlenecks we incorporated two solutions into our

  workflow: (1) Globus Genomics, a well-maintained cloud based sequencing data analysis framework which leverage advanced tools and data management, and (2) GenomAnalytics from GenomOncology, an interactive platform for data integration, annotation, filtering an interpretation. We also evaluated current methods, and developed Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) for the most common data types; RNA-seq, exome-seq, and whole genome resequencing. This workflow provides high quality, standardized, and low-cost NGS data analysis in a reasonably short turnaround time to all investigators. The system is self-sustaining and scalable to process larger number of samples with minimal need for additional personnel.