Development And Sharing Of Digital Granules For Business, Technology and Bioinformatics Curricula

Abstract

Programs in Business Administration, Information Systems, and Bioinformatics have some common topics that are taught in a variety of courses. Though the individual courses may vary significantly, topics such as project management and systems development have certain core contents that are quite similar, if not the same. Lacking a common place to go to for such contents, instructors create their own teaching materials leading to duplication and inefficiency. Often such materials are created from instructor’s resources found in standard textbooks. But such materials tend to be specific to one discipline. In addition, such materials rarely introduce students to project-based learning, a fundamental requirement for effective learning. No digital granules for common topics in the aforementioned disciplines are readily available. We propose to create, disseminate and reuse digital contents for certain common topics we have identified across the disciplines and also across UW campuses. For example, our digital granules on project management will be used in the Systems Analysis and Design and Operations Management courses at UW-Parkside, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Whitewater campuses. They will be made available to any other UW campus that wants to use them. Similarly, our digital granules on database systems will be used in Database Management Systems course (MIS discipline) as well as Introduction to Bioinformatics course (Computational Biology discipline) at UW-Parkside, and at any other campus that wants to use them. This project will involve the following collaborative efforts: (1) collaborative teaching efforts between Information Systems area and the Computational Biology area at UW-Parkside, (2) Collaborative teaching effort between Business departments at UW-Parkside and UW-Eau Claire, and (3) Collaborative teaching effort between Business departments at UW-Parkside and UW-Whitewater.