Students Develop IT Projects that Deliver Service

Students Develop IT Projects that Deliver Service

by John Willinsky

This course isn't about technology-it's about management!", declared a student, with an exasperated but knowing voice in the classroom debate on the upcoming years' learning outcomes for Information Technology Management (ITM) course which a high school teacher was holding with her students. The student had come to recognize that learning how to manage technology is the key to ITM, and that management is not about some individual who sits in the corner office, but rather about individual and shared responsibility for getting the job done. The story also illustrates the collaboration of student and teacher that goes on in an ITM course, where learning outcomes are met through the identification of personal, group and "client" objectives, realized through a project-driven approach to studying information technology or computer studies for grades 10-12.
The defining characteristic of the ITM program is the M, for management. The students are learning to apply their skills to helping others in the school and community with new technologies, providing this service through collaborative projects that enable the students to learn and practice project management strategies commonly used in a knowledge economy. The students gain course credit through the provision of technical support, training, software development, and communication of IT issues and opportunities, making the school's IT environment a better place for both learning and information management, while they examine the social issues surrounding information technology, whether involving privacy, piracy, access, or gender. They come to see managing technology as, above all, a service which they can provide to others, a service through which they learn more about people and work-processes than just technology. Providing technology services and participating in collaborative projects enables the students and teachers, as well as people in the community, to realize the potential of technology for learning, creating, sharing, and connecting.
What does it mean to learn through service to others? The ITM program is designed to provide students with authentic problem-solving experiences, engaging with different communities of experts as they seek answers to technology challenges encountered while supporting users who need assistance with new technologies. It places the students in collaborative learning situations that develop their sense of accountability and responsibility. They are learning about the nature of work in today's new economy, a workplace fueled by the development of new technologies, where business success is determined not by the ability to "build a better mousetrap", but by exemplary service delivery to the customer or client. In British Columbia the services which students provide as part of the ITM program has been recognized as a valid form of accredited "work experience" required for graduation.
What do the students actually do in an ITM course. Well, in terms of the projects the student might take on, we can offer this example sent to us by Laurane Parris who teaches the program in a B.C. school. She writes that, "with this emphasis on helping people manage, ITM students offer services ranging from providing on-the-spot relief to such calls as 'Help, the printer's jammed!' or 'How do I send e- mail?' They also get deeply involved in more complex, longer term projects such as:
Building a school home page that will go up this year on the Web.
Creating animations in 3-D to run on the hall monitors displaying school/community events.
Participating in the planning, configuring and installation of a LAN at the nearby elementary school.
Developing a hypercard stack on peer counselors to guide students.
Implementing a FirstClass Server as the school's e-mail system and bulletin board. Assembling a demonstration computer in a clear plastic case.
Implementing a web server to create and maintain web pages for nonprofit groups in the community.
Planning a web radio station for the broadcasting class to run.
Establishing a production center for desktop publishing and multimedia presentations in the school.
Laurane points out that service involves the sharing of expertise. Every student in the class must teach, starting with one-to-one and working toward full-scale PowerPoint presentations to an audience of unfamiliar adults. Students teach each other technical skills. They also teach the teachers. They give in-school workshops on the software used for grading and she has told us, "by the end of term students who know ReMark are chased down hallways by desperate teachers." The students have also taught workshops to teachers on CorelDraw and have provided district Internet training where they were responsible for working with the librarian to train up to 1400 students and 100 teachers on how to use the Internet.
And judging by the comments of the grade 10 student who led the CorelDraw workshop, it was an exhilarating experience. "It was about November. Miss Jones just handed me this CorelDraw booklet and said learn the program," the student told us, "I'd never used it before, never touched it. So, 'learn it because in 2 months you've got to teach a seminar on it to teachers,' and I was just like, 'I can't do this,' you know. And then when I came out of it, I taught the whole thing, and...no negative comments came back...Oh, it was a total, a total great achievement."
One important aspect in ITM is its ability to draw students with an affinity for technology away from the screen and into sharing their expertise with others, developing a whole new set of skills and a sense of accomplishment for them. This social aspect of working with people also proves to have an appeal for those students who have not traditionally been drawn to computer courses, such as young women. One young woman in the grade 10 class explained it this way: "As I got into Information Technology Management, it seemed to be more girls, actually, and I think it is, I don't know why, but it seems to be that the boys seemed to be more attracted to it for some reason, and that's why I was surprised that it seemed to be more girls, maybe because of the independence thing. But I think that over the next few years its going to get more equal between, that's for sure."
When it came to describing what she liked about the program, she told us about the responsibility, independence and sense of completeness to the work she did. "I think learning more about how to develop your own type of program which you're interested in ... like, I did for the Counseling Centre that was the most positive thing, because I had to do the whole thing all together, instead of just learning about one thing one day and then changing to another one. So that was the most positive thing for me." The Information Technology Management program was initiated in 1994 by Knowledge Architecture Inc. a Vancouver company that was established by an educator and IT industry professional to make a distinct social and technological contribution within Canada's telecommunications, information and education infrastructure. In a very short period, the company worked with teachers and industry people to develop one of the first project-learning programs. Students are currently taking ITM courses in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.
In the first year of program delivery, ITM was offered as a traditional paper-based curriculum of learning outcomes and assessment activities that was delivered by staff mentors who had experience in the IT industry and who visited the schools to provide ongoing teacher and student support on how to provide a professional level of service to the school and community. This support for the ITM program is now delivered through a Web-based learning resource known as Studio A, which provides a workspace for each ITM student. Studio A forms a password-protected intranet within the ITM classroom for teachers and students, as well as a larger intranet among all of the ITM students in Canada and the US.
The student's personalized workspace has at its center a project book which provides the student with the templates, tables and informational links needed for planning projects in close collaboration with other students. The project book encourages students to achieve a high degree of accountability to both the "client" and the teacher. The student also has a set of electronic project tools they can access from their workspace to assist them with projects such as making presentations or web pages or collaborating electronically. They also have an electronic portfolio for placing materials to be evaluated by the teacher or for showing to prospective employers.
We have learned from other service learning projects how critical it is to have students reflect on what has been accomplished through their projects and where they can grow. To support this process, the student's project book includes a skills matrix for students to set goals and review progress in light of the course's goals and assignments which also forms part of the project book. The student can also reach out through the project book to a wide variety of telementors who have joined the ITM program to provide online help with technical and service questions, as well as career advice.
After working in their project books, students can also take a stroll through the Studio A neighborhood which offers ITM students and teachers a chance to check out what others in the program are up to in the Student Showcase, visit the Cafe' for up the minute news and a chance to exchange opinions, seek or offer help, make conversation, use the ThinkTank for evaluating issues and policies in essays or reports, or look up Just-in-Time-Learning to help them build the know-how in Information Technology they need for projects.
While ITM students are provided with a fully supported workspace on the Web, the ITM teacher has not been forgotten. The teacher also has a personalized project book in Studio A which serves as a management tool for the ITM class. Teachers can publish the course outline and requirements in all of the students' project books. They are able to track the students' projects, and evaluate and comment on the work that students place in their portfolio. They can use their project book to review the class's progress with students and parents. The Just-in-Time Learning section has a special section on professional development for the teacher which helps with how to teach in an ITM program based on teachers' experience with the program, as well as introducing teachers and students to professional methods used in service delivery of the IT industry.
After three years of developing the Information Technology Management program and building Studio A to support it, we now seek to expand this model of a web-supported collaborative environment to other subject areas that could thrive in a project environment. Whether in business education classes providing marketing support to local businesses, communications classes doing brochures for community groups, a drama class putting on a play series, there's no limit to the projects and services students can get involved in. The Studio A website is now being developed to support collaborative learning across a much wider range of subject areas, so that students can have greater opportunities to acquire skills and experiences, as well as the pride that comes of providing a welcomed services to others, that will serve them a lifetime.
To give the final word to Laurane who has been teaching in the ITM program over the last three years, she manages to capture the excitement and challenge of traveling along the new learning highway: "Experience has convinced me that helping 'clients' with real problems, teaching people about web pages, or just being there on a help-desk is the most powerful motivator in the world, for students. Mind you, the other side of that is that being recognized as an expert can be pretty heady stuff at 16 or 17. And part of your role as teacher is going to be helping students cope with these new roles and responsibilities."
About the Author
John Willinsky is the 1997-98 Wm. Allen Chair in Education at Seattle University where he is working on questions of education and technology, while on leave from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is also a consultant to Familyware International that has licensed Studio A and the ITM Program to form part of the Family Central Website. To contact him:
John WillinskySchool of EducationSeattle UniversitySeattle, WA 98122-4460206-287-9056 (0) 206-287-2053 (F)
willinsk@unixg.ubc.ca
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