International Service Learning in an Information Systems Course
Author
Winston Tellis
Dolan School of Business, FairfieldUniversity
14th Annual World Forum
Colleagues in Jesuit Business Education
International Association of Jesuit Business Schools
Business and Education in an Era of Globalization:
The Jesuit Position
July 20-23, 2008
Introduction
The paper will present a course outline for a SL course, beginning with an explanation of the Ignatian Pedagogical Model. This 500-year-old traditionof instruction engages the student as an active participant in the learning process with the instructor. The next segment of the presentation will describe the process of selecting a service site locally, if it is a local course, where the service is in a local community near the campus. The logistical constraints and the pedagogic goals should be preserved, as also the relevance of the service component. Thus, there is a classroom discussion related to the type of service that the students will perform, followed by the trip to the site where the students engage in activity that reinforces the classroom material.
The services of the SL Office could be critical in the selection of and communication with a suitable community partner. This aspect will be presented, along with the instructor’s responsibility for the ensuring the appropriate behavior and mutual respect of the participants.
The author will discuss the particular challenges of an international SL component. While the experience in a national site is often a significant learning experience, an international service experience has a profound effect on the students. The experience is more profound if it was derived in a developing country. However, the preparation for such a service trip imposes significant challenges on the instructor. This segment of the presentation will explore all the issues that normally arise in such instances.
Ignatian Pedagogy
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), recorded his experiences in the Spiritual Exercises and the Ratio Studiorum to convey a consistent process of formation for new Jesuits. This 500 year-old pedagogy is inspired by faith, and even those who do not share a faith can “gather valuable experiences from this document because …it is profoundly human and consequently universal” (Duminuco, 2000). This pedagogical paradigm is a style of teaching and learning. It calls for an “infusion of approaches to value learning and growth within existing curricula” (Duminuco, 2000). One has to be trained to be an effective instructor using this pedagogy. Ignatian pedagogy is addressed to teachers first, as it suggests how a teacher should relate to students, conceives of learning, how a teacher engages a student’s quest for truth, and what the teacher expects from the students. All these elements have significant formative effects on student learning (Duminuco, 2000).
Ignatian pedagogy leads the learner away from excessively utilitarian leanings, away from a tendency towards financial success and its resultant effects of self-absorption and selfishness. It leads learners to develop reasoned attitudes towards other people and the world in which they live. The students accomplish this by exploring facts, asking questions, seeking solutions, and the implications of their findings. It also confirms some of the CST principles they learned in the first week of the course. They learn to reflect on the information they have acquired, and after appropriate consideration, they may feel called to action. The mission of the Jesuits is rooted “in the belief that a new world community of justice, love, and peace needs educated persons of competence, conscience, and compassion” (Duminuco, 2000). It is thus pedagogy for faith and justice, which respects a reverence for the freedom, rights, and power of learners, who will create a new life for themselves. This system integrates the intellectual and moral, with the result that students are often transformed by this education, and could alter the way they think and act in the world they will soon enter as independent adults. They seek the greater good rather than personal gain. This comes from a commitment to justice, and the commitment to enhance the quality of life for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized (JSEA, 2000).
The Ignatian pedagogical paradigm of experience, reflection, and action, requires the instructor to accompany the learners as they encounter truth and explore deeper meaning. Reflection is an essential dynamic in this paradigm. A more comprehensive paradigm would include, as described earlier, context before experience, and evaluation after action. The sequence is thus context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation.
Context of Learning is important at the start of the process. The teacher should learn something about the environment from which the learner comes. Personal care and concern (cura personalis) is a hallmark of a Jesuit institution. Teachers and others in the institution must therefore know as much as possible, about the socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects of the learner, be conscious of the school’s learning environment, and the student’s previous learning.
Experience in the Ignatian model goes beyond merely acquiring knowledge and information. Instructors must infuse the students with an experience that includes the mind, heart, and will, in the learning experience. The total affective and cognitive dimension enlivens the learning experience, and moves the learner to action. This stems from the probing, questioning, and ‘touching’ the topic, which is part of experience.
Reflection is perhaps one of the aspects least attempted in contemporary education. Students need time to assimilate the material presented in class, and then they need time to think about the way in which the facts affect them and others in their world. Here reflection is an opportunity to review the topic, its relationship to other topics and facts, who or what is affected by it, the possible options for action, and the effect of each. This thoughtful consideration of some subject matter, fosters a better understanding of the material and the truths therein, deepens understanding of the implications for the student and others. Experiencing the subject also helps the student begin to answer the question “Who am I?” The instructor’s challenge at this stage is to present the students with questions that will broaden the students’ awareness, to consider others’ viewpoints, and the impact on the poor and disadvantaged. This cannot be imposed on the students, but it must emerge from an environment created by the instructor, that encourages such a reaction. It is clear that Experience and Reflection are interrelated and iterative and is the spring from which the students grow in their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Action proceeds from Experience and Reflection, or the earlier processes would be truncated, as far as Ignatian pedagogy is concerned. Experience and Reflection move the student to action and commitment, particularly to service of the poor. Action is a manifestation of human growth based upon experience and reflection, according to Ignatius. First, the student examines the choices he or she has made and the effect the choices might have on others and self. This interiorized choice leads to an external action that is consistent with the new conviction. This may be a personal change of habit or action in service to others, flowing from the preceding phases.
Evaluation in Ignatian pedagogy goes beyond measurement of academic mastery, to include a student’s well-rounded growth. This requires the instructor to be a mentor, to glean from written reflections and personal meetings how a student has grown, and in what way. Each student grows at a different pace, and only the conversations would help the student to understand the feelings and conflicts that may have arisen. The student should thus learn how to assess the results of the reflection and action, and what, if anything should be changed.
Duminuco (2000) presents the loop (Fig 1) that is an essential element of Ignatian pedagogy:
Duminuco (2000) reminds us that the repetition is helpful for student growth. Ignatian pedagogy applies to all curricula, is fundamental to the teaching-learning process, makes better teachers, personalizes learning, and stresses the social dimension of learning and teaching (Duminuco, 2000).
Service Learning
There are several definitions of service learning, but in Jesuit schools, SL is a natural way to implement Ignatian pedagogy. It also embodies some of the CST principles such as subsidiarity, and concern for those less fortunate, provided the service location is in an area that brings to life some of the principles of CST. Bringle and Hatcher defined service learning as a “course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students (a) participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility” (Bringle and Hatcher, 1995). IS 220 meets the above definition, although the course content covers a broader spectrum than the service aspect offers the students.
A group of faculty and staff at Jesuit universities who are associated with service learning meet regularly. That group agreed to a common understanding of what service learning should encompass at their institutions. Their definition is, “Jesuit service learning embraces Ignatian pedagogy by the mutual enhancement of learning with service, justice, and related civic engagement activities. Through reflection, students recognize and expand their understanding of the challenges faced by people who are marginalized and oppressed. Respect for reciprocal relationships, through community partnerships, is central to the successful integration of academic learning and experience, and enlarges the worldviews of all involved. As a student’s intellectual and personal awareness develops, there is transformative spiritual and humanistic growth leading to continued action for the benefit of the common good.” IS 220 clearly falls within the norms suggested in this definition as well.
Both the above definitions are attempts to make the Academy “a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems, and must reaffirm its historic commitment to what I call the scholarship of engagement” (Boyer, 1997). Ensuring the intellectual content, which stems from the readings, class discussion, and individual reflection, protects the academic integrity of the course. This is consistent with the suggestion that higher education must “build important collaborative partnerships, improve all forms of scholarship, nurture the support of stakeholders, and contribute to the common good” (Bringle et al, 1999).
Figure 2
Cress (2005) showed the centrality of reflection in describing how service learning differs from other courses. Figure 2 shows the concentric circles formed by the teacher, student, community service and the course content, as developed by Cress (2005). It is clear that Cress considers reflection a central component of the process. It ties all the elements of the course together, and gives the student the opportunity to consider the relationship of the course material and the life he or she leads. A useful tool in the design and development of a service- learning course could be the “Service-Learning Course Design Workbook” developed by the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (Howard, 2001).
Course outline
The Information Systems and Operations Management Department in the Dolan School of Business reviews its course offerings frequently to keep abreast of the rapidly changing environment in this discipline. Students assimilate the material better when they are able to bring it to life as in a practical application of it. The department created a new course entitled “Technology and Society” which explores the effects of technology on various segments of the world’s population. The course is offered each semester and meets for one weekly session. Half of that session is conducted in the classroom, and the other half has the students and the instructor on site at an inner city school. FairfieldUniversity is about five miles from Bridgeport, CTthat is the largest city in Connecticut and the poorest. The FairfieldUniversitystudents prepare the high school students to take the state mastery exams using computer software to test and help them learn what they do not know. Personal written reflections are a requirement in the course. This is an important feature of Ignatian Pedagogy as discussed above.
While reviewing the assessment of the above course, the department explored using the same pedagogical paradigm in another course, and discussed the choices available. One course that was of interest to the author was International Information Systems, the content of which needed to be modified and updated. In so doing, the author proposed that the content of the course could concentrate on the countries that are the focus of the outsourcing phenomenon (China and India), and on a developing country where the students could experience some of the effects of off-shoring. The author developed an outline for International Information Systems (IS 350) that included economic, demographic, and cultural facts on China, India, and Nicaragua. Nicaragua was chosen because FairfieldUniversity has a formal relationship with Universidad CentroAmericana, (UCA) a sister Jesuit institution in Managua. Upon graduation, the Fairfieldstudents would enter a world of globalized interrelationships, and they should be prepared to consider some of the realities of conducting business in such circumstances. The textbook for this segment of the course was Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat.
Description of UCA
The UCA was the first private University created in Central America located in the heart of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. It was founded in Nicaragua by Jesuits on July 23, 1960, as an autonomous educational institution of public service and Christian inspiration. The institution strives to develop men and women with a human potential, through high quality formation, capable of using their intelligence and high academic preparation in the service of others. UCA has over 16,000 graduates, mostly professionals that occupy important positions in public and private institutions, including all the sectors of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the country.
The academic efforts of the students, in the investigation of social projection are directed to the equitable and sustainable human development of Nicaragua and the Central American region. UCA’s work benefits fifty thousand families and its graduates are to be found in more than fifty percent of the municipalities of the country, small and medium companies, and other important sectors of the country.
UCA’s modern infrastructure includes laboratories, experimental farms, biometric observatories, and computer labs that support studies on aquaculture, ecosystems, molecular biology, climatology, population, communication, economy, rural development, psychology, sociology, genre, history, education, and other areas.
History of Fondo de Desarollo Local (FDL) and Nitlapán
FDL started with Jesuits doing research to discover what they could do to help educate the poor and aid them in creating a self-sustaining business lifestyle. Nitlapán was founded to formally discover and propose solutions for many situations and problems. Nitlapán means “Time to Plant”; appropriate for an organization focused on increasing the knowledge and self-sustainability of people. The main goal of Nitlapán was to do research, but that research exposed the urgent need for professional development for small business, by providing training, and credit. The credit segment of the organization grew exponentially to the point where it was necessary to create a separate organization to manage the credit aspect of Nitlapán. This was the beginning of FDL.
FDL took over the credit portion of Nitlapán in 1997. They quickly discovered it was most beneficial to develop rural areas because of their greater growth potential. They also began to make decisions about who was most in need of credit. This was necessary and important because FDL is a resourceful company that can provide the necessary credit, and therefore it was important to find potential people to provide the valuable resources, and who would leverage that credit to enhance their businesses and lives. This means they only finance people who have some type of collateral, which can literally be any possession. They also do not finance the poorest of the poor because of this limitation. It should be clarified at this point that making this decision could not have been easy, but it was necessary. It is better to serve people who need help, but also have the means to grow, than trying to reach out to those who would be likely to waste FDL’s monetary resources.
Today Nitlapán has four main organizational sections: 1) Focuses on specific enterprises such as farming and crafts and do not try to engage in too many activities 2) Finds efficient ways to export crafts to be sold at U.S. Universities 3) Helps people get official ownership of lands. This is important for the farmers they service 4) Researches social problems, a task that will never be completed, but is a core task that enables Nitlapán to accomplish its goals. Nitlapán collaborates with FDL to find artisans and farmers to service, and to find markets in which to sell the goods. The absolute goal of every financed project is to enable people to create and maintain a self-sustaining business, and thereby to help people to help themselves.
Outline of International Information Systems (IS 350)
The course content changed considerably from the time it was last offered. The broad themes of globalization, the cultural and economic realities of the developing world were not part of the debate at the time. The author felt that it was imperative to integrate Ignatian pedagogical principles into the course, thus reinforcing the material and making the content memorable to the students. Accordingly, the author developed a plan to seek Service Learningdesignation for the course, thus making ‘experiencing the material’ avital aspect of the course. UCA could be a rich source of International SL projects. The class would include an optional trip to Nicaragua during Spring Break. The ‘optional’ aspect meant that the students who did not travel would have to engage in a local project, preferably with cultural overtones.