Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
instructions regarding the case study and task requirements. They also had an opportunity
for practice prior to commencing the experiment and to ask questions during the experiment.
The session lasted 3 hours.
Dependent Measures and Results
Before using the SBS software (and therefore accessing the document set), participants
were asked to generate ideas with respect to the anticipated requirements for CHA's
information systems. These ideas were then compared with the ideas generated during
application of the protocol in order to determine whether the application of the SBS protocol
had led to a richer level of requirement specifications. Specifically, this study focused upon
whether application of the protocol would result in identification of more
relevant
,
workable
,
and
original
requirements issues (in other words, a subject's creative performance was
evaluated in terms of
relevance
,
originality
, and
workability
of ideas generated before and
after interaction with the tool, as assessed by an expert judge). The judge was a software
developer with over 30 years of experience. The judge examined students' ideas and
evaluated them for relevance, originality, and workability by rating each on a 5-point Likert
scale, with 1 as the lowest and 5 as the highest possible score.
In order to understand the effects of the proposed learning tool on subjects' creative
performance, we statistically analyzed the changes in the nature of ideas generated “after”
the interaction with the tool compared to those “before.” The paired t-test was selected as
the most suitable method for the analysis (Huck et al., 1974). Results of the analysis are shown
graphically in Figure 2.
Overall, the results of the analysis indicated that the tool had a significant positive
impact on the originality of ideas generated but had no significant impact on their relevance
or workability. As shown in Figure 2, there was a significant increase in the originality of ideas
generated by the participants after their interaction with the tool. More specifically, the overall
Figure 2. Mean rating scores for participants' creative performance before and after their
interaction with the technology
