Integrating Social Media into IS/IT Courses: A Success Story to Report

Hossein Bidgoli, Ph.D. Professor of MIS at California State University Helped set up the first PC lab in the U.S. and served as its first director Author of 45 textbooks, 27 lab manuals, and dozens of technical articles Editor-in-Chief of five major encyclopedia and handbook series Numerous national awards and accolades for many of these Encyclopedias and Journals Professor of the Year 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference2

Teaching the Intro Information Systems Course I have been teaching the intro IS course for over 30 years There are two challenges in teaching an intro IS course: The Currency of the Materials Student Engagement 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference3

The Currency of the Materials Even those textbooks that are being published on yearly bases do not reflect the ongoing technology changes in the IS field Students in the IS course are interested in knowing the latest developments in hardware, software, IT jobs, business applications, and new products and services in this field 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference4

Student Engagement Your job as an instructor is well defined (to lecture!) What about your students? How do you connect the students to the course? How do you create a forward-looking course? 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference5

Social Media Students are using one of the social media nearly all the time How about using social media to connect your students to the course? 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference6

How Do We Do It? Using social media we have been able to overcome these challenges My lectures are now as current as the day of the lecture and my students are as engaged as possible with the course We have identified 14 key topics /chapters that are being covered in an intro IS course 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference7

How Do We Do It? (Continued) We post a daily link (a Tweet) to an article published in popular IS/IT publications such as: Computerworld, InfoWorld, CIO,... with a brief reference to a chapter in the textbook Please note these articles are not selected randomly 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference8

14 Key Topics /Chapters Ch. 1 - Information Systems: An Overview Highlights: Gaining Competitive Advantage Using IS Ch. 2 - Computers: The Machines Behind Computing Highlights: Upcoming I/O Devices, Memory Devices, and OSs Ch. 3 - Database Systems, Data Warehouses, and Data Marts Highlights: Business Intelligence 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference9

14 Key Topics /Chapters (Continued) Ch. 4 - Personal, Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Issues of IS Highlights: Reducing Organizational and Personal Risks Ch. 5 - Protecting Information Resources Highlights: Awareness, Safeguards, and Protection of Information Resources Ch. 6 - Data Communications: Delivering Information Anywhere and Anytime Highlights: Modern D.C., Cost Saving, and Collaboration 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference10

14 Key Topics /Chapters (Continued) Ch. 7 - The Internet, Intranets, and Extranets Highlights: E-Collaboration, Web 2.0/Web 3.0, and Social Networking Ch. 8 - Electronic Commerce Highlights: Successful E-commerce Business Models and Technologies Ch. 9 - Global Information Systems Highlights: Doing Business around the Globe 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference11

14 Key Topics /Chapters (Continued) Ch Building Successful Information Systems Highlights: Modern Systems Analysis and Design Ch Enterprise Systems Highlights: Increasing Productivity and Improving Customer Service Ch Management Support Systems Highlights: Improving and Expediting Decision Making Process 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference12

14 Key Topics /Chapters (Continued) Ch Intelligent Information Systems Highlights: Intelligent Computing and Beyond Ch Emerging Trends, Technologies, and Applications Highlights: Cloud Computing and Virtual Worlds 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference13

What Are These Daily Posts? IS/IT applications New developments Breaking news IT Jobs Case examples 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference14

A few examples of recent posts You can rise with public clouds or sink with private (InfoWorld/ Chapter 14) Far from Silicon Valley, a big bet on the Internet of things (InfoWorld/ Chapter 7) Snapchat and other online services need to tighten security (Computerworld/Chapter 5) Gartner lays out its top 10 tech trends for 2015 (InfoWorld/Chapter 1) FTC warns companies not to use big data to exclude consumers (Computerworld/Chapter 3) 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference15

Platform Used Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Others can be added More than 1,000 students and faculties throughout the US are following us We have posted over 1,200 tweets so far 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference16

Facebook Screen Shot 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference17

Twitter Screen Shot 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference18

LinkedIn Screen Shot 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference19

Additional materials For my own students I also post a question for discussion and ask students to comment and interact with each other on the social media The results have been extremely positive The currency of the materials has been significantly improved, and the students’ engagement with each other and with the course has increased dramatically I start each lecture with one of these tweets and ask students to participate 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference20

Social Media as an additional resource You can assign these article links as additional readings to supplement your course Students could use these articles for their term papers and conduct research on a given topic Students simply get the latest information in the IS field 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference21

What Do These Daily Tweets Do? Bring currency to the course Create linkage among different chapters and topics by going back and forth Highlight the importance of the materials to the students by appearing on popular daily IS/IT Publications 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference22

Follow us! Facebook: 4LTR-Press-for-MIS Twitter: 4LTRPress_MIS LinkedIn: Press-MIS Cengage Learning Computing Conference23

Please contact me with any questions or comments: Hossein Bidgoli Thank you! 2015 Cengage Learning Computing Conference24